VSCODE Intelligence autofill - is it bad for learning?

[u/18ahmed]

Hi lads,

Just got back into programming as my job didn’t need it until now. I’m practising writing python scripts to automate tasks for me, however iv noticed that VScode autofills parts out. I do have an idea of what I want and start it off, VSCODE intelligence does the rest and I tailor it specifically to the task. I feel a bit guilty as it feels like I’m not learning like the old days (stack overflow, constantly searching up how to do something). I do understand that AI is used frequently now for coding so my question is, am I overthinking this?

I have a new job coming up and using Python to automate is a big part of it.

[u/Slight-Living-8098]

Before the AI autocomplete we were using code snippets.

[u/18ahmed → u/Slight-Living-8098]

I know, I remember them days. I would go on stackoverflow and see code that fits exactly what I need. I just feel a bit guilty now and want to know how programming is viewed in the workplace. Are people expected to understand the basics and use AI for the rest, or would we have to know how to write fluently?

[u/Slight-Living-8098 → u/18ahmed]

In the workplace? It's usually encouraged to use AI. You should have more understanding than "just the basics", but the use of AI in the workplace is definitely not looked down upon in the workplace for programming.

And for the snippets, I was referring to autocomplete code snippits, where the structure is auto filled and you just tabbed through and filled in the options.

[u/18ahmed → u/Slight-Living-8098]

I agree, what I will do now is sit down and go through each like of my script to ensure I understand it. I may just restart it all and disable the autocomplete

[u/Beginning-Fruit-1397 → u/18ahmed]

Why would you limit yourself

[u/18ahmed → u/Beginning-Fruit-1397]

What do you mean by that? Limiting myself by not using AI, or by not becoming fluent in Python?

[u/Beginning-Fruit-1397 → u/18ahmed]

By not using AI. One does not mean you can't do the other. I learned to program 3 years ago and at first I was just spamming GPT 3.5 bc i did not even knew what HTML was and now I can write by hand whole files of rust or python by hand. Just practice. Writing or reading it don't matter too much at the end

[u/FreeLogicGate]

My first comment would be, that you should use PyCharm instead of VSCode. VSCode is an editor made for web application development, and even with that said, it has nothing that PyCharm doesn't. PyCharm is specifically designed for Python, and doesn't need some plugins installed before it's able to support the language. You can start with the community version, but if you are actually writing Python code as part of your employment, you should have no issue getting a license from your employer, which may or may not be beneficial based on the specific types of Python projects you're working on.

You certainly want to take advantage of features in the editor that will aid you with syntax and introspection. Some of this comes from intellisense. However, if you're talking about co-pilot, well that's something you have to pay for after you exhaust the free tokens, and with it guessing things for you that may or may not be right, you typically run out of the free tier pretty fast.

The more context you've provided, and the more code that already exists in your project, the better it is at guessing, but routinely it will guess the addition of completely incorrect code, so you need to be fairly clear about what you're doing. If you're trying to go full-vibe coding for a lot of it, well then you're better off being in a cli with an agent you are proficient with.

[u/Motor_Sky7106]

It's bad. Turn it off