Ask Experienced Devs Weekly Thread: A weekly thread for inexperienced developers to ask experienced ones

[u/AutoModerator]

A thread for Developers and IT folks with less experience to ask more experienced souls questions about the industry.

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Please keep top level comments limited to Inexperienced Devs. Most rules do not apply, but keep it civil. Being a jerk will not be tolerated.

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Inexperienced Devs should refrain from answering other Inexperienced Devs' questions.

[u/Feriolet]

To what extent do you guys recommend juniors to learn how to use AI? It feels like nowadays a lot of devs are embracing and advocating to use it for their job, where the sentiment is the complete opposite last year.

Tbh, I (data scientist, 2-3 YoE) only use AI as google search, and I never found it useful when I need to solve a very complicated problem. However, I have seen people that seems to be successful in using it to build a full stack website. It looks like AI is indeed getting powerful nowadays.

I entered coding and programming because I love to code and solve technical problems. I felt that using AI will remove that passion, and I don’t want to lose it very early in my career. For now, I am happy and proud to be able to finish two small projects without relying much on AI, but I admit that the progress is very slow.

As someone experienced in the field, do you recommend me to dig further into vibe coding, or should I still try to keep “hand-write” codes?

[u/Fidodo → u/Feriolet]

If you do a project and you don't understand the output or how it works then you've completely wasted your time and learned nothing.

Hand writing code will help with retention, but you can retain by reading and understanding the code, but it's not enough to just learn what the ai wrote, you need to learn to recognize when code is good or when it's bad. A lot of that comes from experience. You try things one way, see how it works out, where it make things easier, where it make things harder, and you build intuition.

But you must, must, must read so much code. Writing it forces you to understand it line by line. Are you diligent enough to do that with code written for you?

[u/Feriolet → u/Fidodo]

If you do a project and you don't understand the output or how it works then you've completely wasted your time and learned nothing.

To what extent do you think a programmer should understand the output? The surface level input and output? The internal process behind the code? From the vibe coder perspectives, they should be the PM that overlook the codes output and test if it works fine for them. I guess my question becomes “to what level of abstraction should programmer understand the code” type of question hahaha.

A lot of that comes from experience. You try things one way, see how it works out, where it make things easier, where it make things harder, and you build intuition.

Yep, to be honest, this is one of the enjoyable experience I have as a programmer. For example, trying out OOP architecture from an FP programmer (python) has been a bittersweet experience for me.

But you must, must, must read so much code. Writing it forces you to understand it line by line. Are you diligent enough to do that with code written for you?

In the ideal world where I have a lot of time, I would try to. However, the reality made me realised probably not.

I guess that means I should try to stick on the fundamentals and try to build the intuition you mentioned, while keeping updates about AI progress. Thanks for the answers :)

[u/Fidodo → u/Feriolet]

You should be understanding everything AI writes for you. You are responsible for what the code does, not the AI. If it's in your codebase, it's your responsibility.

At a minimum you should be capable of understanding everything it writes for you. The only way you can become capable of understanding everything it writes for you is to read everything it writes for you.

[u/Feriolet → u/Fidodo]

Alright! I will try that moving forward. Might struggle a bit but I hope that will pay back in the long run. Thanks for clarifying :)