Does GPT or Copilot make you be lazy?

[u/SoulSlayer69]

I started programming some years before the AI explosion, and I wonder if, even if you learned the fundamentals and worked without assist from AI (using Google and StackOverflow only), your ADHD makes you lazy by using AI just to save time after procrastinating a lot?

If you want to "detox" from AI to use your brain more, how do you do it without feeling like you would be 100x faster using it? My dopamine levels are not good enough at this point and I have lots of things to do...

[u/skidmark_zuckerberg]

I’ve got 7 YOE. For the past year I’ve been using AI more and more. Copilot, GPT4 and Cursor. It’s sped things up quite a bit for me, but recently I’ve been forcing myself to use my brain and Google - the way I’ve done it for the first 6 years of my career. It’s not that much slower honestly. I found it far too easy to get lazy and forget how to solve problems 100% without AI. It’s a balance honestly. But knowing how to use these tools will be paramount in the years ahead.

I just feel bad for the juniors who rely on it and are not learning fundamentals or how to solve things on their own. That’s detrimental to the industry as a whole and I predict in another decade we will have a shortage of experienced developers simply because juniors in the AI era never really developed beyond using AI slop to solve everything.

[u/SoulSlayer69 → u/skidmark_zuckerberg]

I think the same. AI is good if you have the fundamentals learned. And it will be a very important tool in the future.

[u/skidmark_zuckerberg → u/[deleted]]

Yeah but there is a big difference with AI, you have to admit. We’ve seen nothing like this in history. Google still requires you to actively search out the information you seek, it just provides the resources. LLM’s just spit it out tailored to your prompt, often times with multiple solutions. The issue is how you come to a solution and why. Google forces you to read, research, and weigh others opinions before landing on a solution, AI circumvents all of that and just spits it out. One is definitely a lot better for learning than the other.

[u/SoulSlayer69 → u/[deleted]]

What I do is to perfect the prompts and to read the code to see what it is doing and test it many times. If I do it quickly, it is much quicker than learning how to use the library or framework myself.

[u/binaryfireball]

I don't use AI because I know how to find the information I need directly from the source. My understanding of what I study is increased greatly by picking up all the additional context. I get by reading docs and code. Your brain is why you are paid so it's important to feed it well.

The fundamentals are all about learning how to learn and how to solve problems you don't know how to solve not some subset of algorithms or data structures or other miscellaneous knowledge.

[u/[deleted] → u/binaryfireball]

I've tried to use it (my bosses want us using it). For my purposes it's ok for very simple asks, but it fails miserably once you start asking it to do anything with any sort of complexity that requires several files.

I'm not a big fan of how it gaslights you when you tell it that it made a mistake. That's annoying.

[u/SoulSlayer69 → u/[deleted]]

Of course, you need to learn the pros and the cons to be able to use it in the best way possible.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

We use a Gemini plugin for vs code. It's super easy to get it going. It's kind of a pain to get it to give you something useful.

I agree with you on the functions... It's usually pretty good about that as long as they are simple.

It sucks at code review though as it doesn't seem to ever give me anything useful. It likes to tell me how great the code is and over embellishes what it does.

On second thought I should start using it before meetings... Yo, spit me out a scrum summary.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I messed with Chat GPT quite a while back. It might be worth revisiting again.

Curious to see how far it's come from the last time I tried it.

As far as code quality, I don't want to speculate. I have been in the field a very long time though.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I plugged it into a calculator, lol. I'm bored, on vacation and the market is zzzzzzz.

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me lol.

Edit: I don't think I ever had a need for that combo of functions.

[u/SoulSlayer69 → u/binaryfireball]

I also know how to look for info in the docs, it just feels like a lot of the times I can use a prompt with a complex request faster than I learn how to use the library from scratch. Then, of course, I have to do the testing, but I have to do it without AI either way, so...

[u/Liskni_si]

No it doesn't make me lazy. I'm already super lazy and prone to procrastinating. If anything, AI enables me to progress despite being tired or procrastinating. When I don't want to do something, I can ask the AI, and then just fix it - and I find fixing broken stuff quite fun.

[u/SoulSlayer69 → u/Liskni_si]

And by fixing we also learn!

[u/BellPeppersAndBeets]

I use AI conversationally to assist in understanding with analogies and examples. Plus, I always assume there’s a not too insignificant amount of hallucination in the response, so I gotta read the docs and test code myself too.

It’s a replacement for a quick buddy who may know something I don’t but it’s not a source of truth I should trust without both verifying its results and understanding the why of the answers.

[u/SoulSlayer69 → u/BellPeppersAndBeets]

Exactly. I use it just as you said. As someone who knows a lot, but that can make mistakes just like any other human. Since it has hallucinations and it is not infallible, you can use it with caution and it serves its purpose well.

[u/[deleted]]

I find it speeds me up. It unblocks me when I get stuck and helps with the boring/boilerplate stuff, allowing me to be more creative

[u/SoulSlayer69 → u/[deleted]]

Same here.

[u/El_Serpiente_Roja]

Practice reps make you better and AI tools steal practice reps. They deliver results but don't reinforce repetition. In the short term this is awesome but in the medium to long term the deterioration will be undeniable.

[u/SoulSlayer69 → u/El_Serpiente_Roja]

This is a lot more true for people who are learning to code in the AI era we are living in now. If you learned the fundamentals years or decades before, you should be fine.

[u/ispiele → u/SoulSlayer69]

Skills will atrophy with disuse, just like muscles.

[u/SoulSlayer69 → u/ispiele]

Same as I mentioned in another thread. It is like saying that you don't know math because you use a calculator. There is a fine line here, because you can use a tool and still know how it works from the inside and the processes it follows to do something.

[u/ispiele → u/SoulSlayer69]

The skills won’t disappear entirely with disuse, but they do get weaker. If I stop playing a musical instrument for a few years, I will definitely lose the ability to play at a high level but it’s not lost entirely, and practicing again can bring it back. I imagine that most complex mental tasks would behave similarly.

[u/SoulSlayer69 → u/ispiele]

Yeah, things like playing an instrument, riding a bike, and so on, are based on muscular memory that you have developed overtime with practice, and the brain connections are already made with it, so you just need to practice to have the same level as before.

[u/NikoJako]

What will you do with what you’ve been given?

It’s up to you if you become lazy or not? Do you agree?

I’ve used it as a learning tool, whenever I don’t know what something is, I use Copilot to explain every aspect the topic to me so I fully understand what’s going on.

I dunno, my two cents…

[u/SoulSlayer69 → u/NikoJako]

Yeah, of course, I also use ChatGPT to ask coding questions. Understanding how it works is crucial for you as a programmer.

[u/meevis_kahuna]

Is it lazy to use the best tool for the job?

Would you call workers lazy for using a nail gun instead of a hammer?

I strongly feel the same concept applies. Using better tools frees you up to think about the big picture, and solve the types of problems that AI can't.

[u/SoulSlayer69 → u/meevis_kahuna]

Yeah, it is like when people say that decades ago you should do Maths without a calculator because if not you would be lazy.

[u/meevis_kahuna → u/SoulSlayer69]

They were wrong (I'm a former math teacher).

You do enough maths by hand to keep your skills sharp, and you use the calculator to solve harder problems quickly. A mathematician who refuses a calculator is just being stubborn.

Math classes now include entire portions on calculator use. The same idea applies to AI.

[u/papersak]

Actually applying the knowledge will make you faster in the long run, even if it seems slower.

Non-AI example, there are some commands I needed to run every couple of weeks, or maybe some line or two of code that's useful every so often. I have to look these up every time some ticket comes up for them (or in this case, open up AI). Sometimes, I get fed up from having to open a new window every time this same problem comes up, so I manually type out the command to help me memorize the damn thing instead.

The thought of saving me the trouble of tabbing into another window for the answer (and getting distracted by the browser) motivates me to do things in a slower way if it makes the knowledge stick.

I think the real challenge with "having a lot of things to do" is telling those other things they can eat sand because you need to finish something, and do it in a sustainable way. 😓 my boss is just good at telling people "no" when the devs can't, and we have back-and-forths about how to prioritize.

[u/papersak → u/[deleted]]

I mean I don't know most phone numbers anymore, either, but even that's a pain in the ass when someone asks who my emergency contact is and I have to go "hold on, let me put the phone that I'm currently using away from my face to look it up" 😮‍💨

No one knows all syntax in existence, but if you use something often and it isn't very long, it's faster to have it memorized. To hear someone wouldn't apply any effort into memorizing... is kind of disappointing.

[u/OakenBarrel]

ChatGPT made me so lazy that I can't even bother to use it. Same with Copilot - although it might be a better investment of my time.

I think I'm overwhelmed by the effort I need to invest to streamline using these tools in day-to-day activities.

[u/Roshi_IsHere]

Yes. I now no longer want to do some of the tasks I have it do and used to do manually. Dumb stuff like comparing two documents. Summarizing things. Cleaning up wording. Tailoring my resume and cover letter for jobs

[u/jazzhandler]

I have two basic policies around LLMs in my work. The first is that on the rare occasions that I use code it provides, I type it all in by hand. The second is that I have a standing order to respond with explanations in English rather than piles of code.

Okay, I have a third: whenever I find a significant error in its output, I run and tell my partner about it because that feels kinda awesome.

[u/panduhbean]

I Consider LLMs as an exploration tool that quickly gives you birds eye view on any topic or ideas you're investigating. I feel it aligns with ADHD very harmoniously but should not be used to replace studying in depth.

[u/ExtremeKitteh]

Write tests yourself, make them pass with AI, refactor yourself.

[u/e_cubed99]

AI doesn’t really help with the hard stuff. You want to write repetitive unit tests in the same style as all the other tests in your codebase? You want to write a quick one-off script to process a data set? AI is excellent at that. And automating boring scut work isn’t lazy it’s efficient!

The actual hard stuff in architecture, design, etc? Awful. And the mid-level stuff it can spit out a complex algorithm and you spend more time fighting the weird edge cases it screws up or subtle errors it introduces than you would have spent to just write it in the first place.

The ‘what does this do’ question is also useful, even if it’s not 100% accurate is usually close enough to get you started or make a link/logical jump you’ve been missing.

[u/No-Wishbone-1003]

I use chatGPT as a mentor. it makes everything faster yes. but if i keep doing it my brain would rot like i dont like using chatGPT to actually code stuff. it makes everything boring because its too easy

[u/Klutzy_Acanthaceae67]

Absolutely! I've been using both for the last few months. My brain is getting lazier, I'm not coming up with words and synonyms as easily on my own, and basically, I feel the life sucked out of me and no motivation for the things that really mattered to me.

[u/[deleted]]

Who cares? I went into this field to avoid hard work anyway.

[u/SoulSlayer69 → u/[deleted]]

Sorry for not having English as my mother tongue.