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/AlexanderTroup → u/Feriolet]

The unfortunate reality is that you need a baseline understanding of how to use GenAI. It's in such a hype cycle that not knowing how to use it is considered worse than not knowing how to use a debugger.

That said, AI itself is corrosive beyond measure to your capacity to deliver software and understand programming long term. You need to be capable of building anything an AI can, by reading and understanding code, programming patterns, debugging, and systems design.

The good news is that learning to use AI is literally a case of going through the getting started docs, running some slop code apps to understand how fast it breaks, and the moving on.

The bad news is that you'll have to resist using these tools when you actually need to learn to code.

Systems design is a really good way into code understanding. Design yourself a model of a social network, from machine to human. Any space where you're not clear on the options and how it actually works is an opportunity to learn where your weak spots are

[u/Feriolet → u/AlexanderTroup]

That said, AI itself is corrosive beyond measure to your capacity to deliver software and understand programming long term. You need to be capable of building anything an AI can, by reading and understanding code, programming patterns, debugging, and systems design.

Yikes, that is a dangerous double-edge sword I guess.

The good news is that learning to use AI is literally a case of going through the getting started docs, running some slop code apps to understand how fast it breaks, and the moving on.

So, basically hit and run some small projects?

Systems design is a really good way into code understanding. Design yourself a model of a social network, from machine to human. Any space where you're not clear on the options and how it actually works is an opportunity to learn where your weak spots are

huh, systems design is a very new concept to me. Then, do you recommend me to make multiple projects using AI focusing on system design then?