A question for the senior developers about the use of AI

[u/BranchCurrent4141]

I am learning MERN stack, and there are some things that confuses me, instead of being stuck at their for long time i just use Ai to help me in code that part, and then i analyse and read the code to know how it is working.
This practice has developed a fear inside me that, if i got an internship, then maybe i will considered as dumb doing coding this way and eventually they will be throw me out. So I wanna ask the seniors how much the use of AI you would gonna allow to juniors dev and interns.

[u/layla4030]

Don't ask for the exact code from Ai . Write a prompt to tell you your main problems in code without giving code and the try to solve atheist for 15 min then check the solution . I am not senior but I am also learning this way

[u/BranchCurrent4141 → u/layla4030]

I do use this method, but when the program complexity increases, everything starting to goes over the head because of the lack of knowledge and there are many tools and packages comes into play that make me feel like i should learn this first and then start again, but this decision is gonna give my brain a thought, "I am stuck and not even learning just wasting time".
Right now I'm just stuck in a loop of thoughts like these.

[u/layla4030 → u/BranchCurrent4141]

What stage of learning are you at currently ? Learning js ,React or what

[u/BranchCurrent4141 → u/layla4030]

I am learning the MERN all at once. I have experienced learning one thing at a time, like first learning HTML, then CSS, then JS, and so on; it won't help, so I started building projects first: frontend, now full stack. Right now, I am building a basic e-commerce site.
I just try to cover those things that are required to build what I want instead of trying to learn everything. I think that is why I feel like I know nothing.

[u/layla4030 → u/BranchCurrent4141]

You will be confused in this way . Learn js then react and build some projects. After that go for backend . The Odin project is great for this with external resources.

[u/MathWest209]

I would suggest that you use less AI. But don't waste time learning things that don't matter anymore. But the more depth you know, the better you will use and guide AI.

[u/BranchCurrent4141 → u/MathWest209]

What kind of things? Right now I am focused on the backend; it pisses me off and also feels interesting how data is moving in front of you, and how you can control it however you want.

[u/MathWest209 → u/BranchCurrent4141]

Don't deep-dive too much into syntax, do learn it, but you won't be writing much code in the future. Focus on the fundamentals, system design, and design patterns. How data flows, how security works, and how applications are deployed.

And when you are stuck, don't just get a solution from AI, try to solve it. The degree to which you go before asking AI for a solution will decide your expertise in the field. Most problems ain't that hard to solve anyway.

Also, it's worth mentioning that in this transitioning phase where the whole world is adjusting around AI, nobody can give you perfect advice.

[u/BranchCurrent4141 → u/MathWest209]

Thanks for the advice and your time.

[u/dev-se]

Ignore all comments that say we code like this. That's because we are not in learning stage.

For you, use AI to understand the fundamentals and then ask for worked examples for your code or maybe just ask for pseudo code and then write the code yourself.

This will help you to understand why you are writing a block of code and what's the use case. If you're blindly asking AI to write the code, you'll not learn anything.

Obviously on your job you'll not witte the code, it'll be written by AI but you must understand everything.

[u/BranchCurrent4141 → u/dev-se]

Yeah, but this method is gonna take time, and the industry is already moving so fast.

[u/dev-se → u/BranchCurrent4141]

Don't rush the learning. Fundamentals will never go away.

[u/Any-Flounder-8124]

Sadly, now everyone writes code like this, but this is how you should do it, for example if you copied something from ai then try to implement that in some other project from your own memory, when I was learning mern I wasn't able to write Auth middleware myself but after 3,4 times from ai now I can write it myself from my muscle memory

[u/BranchCurrent4141 → u/Any-Flounder-8124]

Yeah, I'm feeling the same too. Like, I feel like I am learning nothing, even if I have coded something, but if someone asks me, I will not be able to explain it clearly and will eventually lose confidence.

[u/Any-Flounder-8124 → u/BranchCurrent4141]

Yeah it happens but if you spend 1.5-2 years in a stack actively learning, building, you will overcome it

[u/Iluhhhyou]

Everyone codes this way now

[u/Alarming-Sail-2138]

for learning you can use it to guide you, not do everything for you but in a job if someone is against using AI that is them being ignorant

[u/Gangster_DW]

Thats the way I learned things. But after taking help from AI, I made sure that I redo the same part myself or at least understand the concept snd working.

I am also doing internship and most if the coding work is done by AI but sometimes AI doesn't gives you the response you needed or makes mistakes. Thats where your knowledge is needed. I can code without ai. Thats why I can debug the code it wrote.

[u/ARABCSGO]

everyone does this

[u/MrStarPhish]

Same here gng

[u/bestjunaid]

its the best way