this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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I was talking to someone who does software development, and he described his experiments with AI for coding.
He said that he was able to use it successfully and come to a solution that was elegant and appropriate.
However, what he did not do was learn how to solve the problem, or indeed learn anything that would help him in future work.
I'm a senior software dev that uses AI to help me with my job daily. There are endless tools in the software world all with their own instructions on how to use them. Often they have issues and the solutions aren't included in those instructions. It used to be that I had to go hunt down any references to the problem I was having though online forums in the hopes that somebody else figured out how to solve the issue but now I can ask AI and it generally gives me the answer I'm looking for.
If I had AI when I was still learning core engineering concepts I think shortcutting the learning process could be detrimental but now I just need to know how to get X done specifically with Y this one time and probably never again.
100% this. I generally use AI to help with edge cases in software or languages that I already know well or for situations where I really don't care to learn the material because I'm never going to touch it again. In my case, for python or golang, I'll use AI to get me started in the right direction on a problem, then go read the docs to develop my solution. For some weird ugly regex that I just need to fix and never touch again I just ask AI, test the answer it gices, then play with it until it works because I'm never going to remember how to properly use a negative look-behind in regex when I need it again in five years.
I do think AI could be used to help the learning process, too, if used correctly. That said, it requires the student to be proactive in asking the AI questions about why something works or doesn't, then going to read additional information on the topic.
how does he know that the solution is elegant and appropriate?
Because he has the knowledge and experience to completely understand the final product. It used an approach that he hadn't thought of, that is better suited to the problem.
Lol, how can he not learn from that??
I feel you, but I've asked it why questions too.