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Learn to code, ignore AI, then use AI to code even better

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Re: Learn to code, ignore AI, then use AI to code even better

#71

Post by nightfox1 »

This resonates a lot with what I’ve seen outside of code too. I’ve been building an AI chess coach and noticed the same pattern: people plug their games into Stockfish, see a list of best moves, and walk away thinking they’ve “analyzed” the game. But real understanding — like in programming — only comes from engaging with why things went wrong.

That’s what I’m trying to fix. Instead of just showing lines, my AI coach gives voice-guided feedback, visual highlights, and practical insights. More like working with a real coach than sifting through raw engine output.

The goal is to make analysis as engaging as playing—and shift the mindset from “just tell me the best move” to “help me think better.”

Demo if curious: https://www.loom.com/share/9e1578f1348841c1992c5d902e371312?...

Re: Learn to code, ignore AI, then use AI to code even better

#72

Post by exodust »

intelVISA wrote: post #67
CharlieDigital wrote: post #49

Probably the opposite is true: the more you know how to code, the less productive you'll be with AI. This has been my observation watching a non-technical friend build a SaaS as a one-man team in 4 months and is generating $#,000 in revenue within 2 months. The way he uses AI is just completely different from how the technical folks I know use AI because he doesn't think about the code at all. The way he instructs th…

Problem is what kind of moat does that SaaS have? The flip side of 'we replaced our dev team with vibe coders look how fast we print shitware' is now shitware value falls close to 0, as anyone can make it. Though you suggest he's non-technical... "writing down exactly what he wants" is just coding!

> "writing down exactly what he wants" is just coding!

Agreed. The more exact and clear your instructions are, the closer to programming it is. Presumably the non-technical person has an application where they care about things like performance, scalability, compatibility and all those things coders sweat over.

Re: Learn to code, ignore AI, then use AI to code even better

#73

Post by globnomulous »

major505 wrote: post #30

The best part of AI in my opnion is not having to search through documentation. You have any questions about a specific funcion in this lib? Just ask, and will do the search for you, and provide an quick example of use. This shit is magical.

Trying nine wrong solutions to a problem before finding the tenth, which actually succeeds, is frequently an essential part of the learning process, in writing natural language as in programming.

Re: Learn to code, ignore AI, then use AI to code even better

#74

Post by hagbarth »

valenterry wrote: post #47
nkrisc wrote: post #6

If you spend time on places that attract newbie programmers (some subreddits focused on game dev or game engines, for example) you’ll see the outcome of “I no longer think you should learn to code.” And it’s not pretty. Many, many posts of people looking for help fixing AI-generated code because the AI got it wrong and they have no idea what the code even does. Much of the time the problem is simply an invented metho…

> a problem that is trivially solved by the error message and documentation Then why does the AI not solve it anyways? I think understanding "the code" will eventually be as important as understanding machine code or assembly nowadays - still very important for a small number of devs, important in very rare cases for some other devs and completely irrelevant to the majority of devs.

Does your question not refute your statement? The AI doesn't solve the problem because it can't.

Re: Learn to code, ignore AI, then use AI to code even better

#75

Post by theshrike79 »

kshacker wrote: post #21
nkrisc wrote: post #6

If you spend time on places that attract newbie programmers (some subreddits focused on game dev or game engines, for example) you’ll see the outcome of “I no longer think you should learn to code.” And it’s not pretty. Many, many posts of people looking for help fixing AI-generated code because the AI got it wrong and they have no idea what the code even does. Much of the time the problem is simply an invented metho…

I have played around wit AI code from time to time. I do not code routinely but I have pet personal projects that allow me to do some code and this is where I experimented. Rule number 1 and the only rule: You need to be a subject matter expert. Be it program logic or be it programming language. AI is only a helper, it will go wrong, frequently, and if you do not understand the reason for the code and the programming…

AI is excellent for tasks you know how to do, but can't be arsed to spend the time.

Example: I wanted a tool that notifies me of replies or upvotes to my recent Hacker News comments. Grok3 did it in 133 seconds with Think mode enabled. Total time including me giving it the example HTML as attachment and writing the specs + pasting the response to a file and running it? About 5 minutes.

I know perfectly well how to do it myself, but do I want to spend the hour or so to write all the boilerplate for managing state and grabbing HTML and figuring out the correct html elements to poll? Fuck no.

Re: Learn to code, ignore AI, then use AI to code even better

#76

Post by theshrike79 »

ElectricalUnion wrote: post #57
kshacker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have played around wit AI code from time to time. I do not code routinely but I have pet personal projects that allow me to do some code and this is where I experimented. Rule number 1 and the only rule: You need to be a subject matter expert. Be it program logic or be it programming language. AI is only a helper, it will go wrong, frequently, and if you do not understand the reason for the code and the programming…

From my experience using ai, if you don't write a really precise description of your initial requirements in the initial prompt, and it it doesn't one-shot the answer, I don't bother asking it to fix the mistake. Unless you're using a LLM with really long context, it's prone that some context loss will happen soner or later - when that happens, pointing errors that dropped out of the context will just result in repea…

This is why platforms(?) like Claude Code, Cursor and Windsurf are essential.

Claude Code forces you to create a CLAUDE.md to direct how it works, with Cursor you can (and should) write Cursor Rules.

The difference with a good spec + AI vs just vibe coding from scratch is like night and day.

Re: Learn to code, ignore AI, then use AI to code even better

#77

Post by derekp7 »

ElectricalUnion wrote: post #57
kshacker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have played around wit AI code from time to time. I do not code routinely but I have pet personal projects that allow me to do some code and this is where I experimented. Rule number 1 and the only rule: You need to be a subject matter expert. Be it program logic or be it programming language. AI is only a helper, it will go wrong, frequently, and if you do not understand the reason for the code and the programming…

From my experience using ai, if you don't write a really precise description of your initial requirements in the initial prompt, and it it doesn't one-shot the answer, I don't bother asking it to fix the mistake. Unless you're using a LLM with really long context, it's prone that some context loss will happen soner or later - when that happens, pointing errors that dropped out of the context will just result in repea…

What I do is go back through the conversation history, select the response that has the somewhat working code, then submit a prompt with what I want changed. By selectively including context and adjusting temperature, top_p/k and sometimes swapping model or system prompt for a given query will give better results. Combine this with repeating the query multiple times with that same context, then select which result is the best and move on.

Re: Learn to code, ignore AI, then use AI to code even better

#78

Post by whstl »

nkrisc wrote: post #36
whstl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subreddits focused on gamedev have long stopped being about the craft itself, unfortunately. 90% of the posts are about marketing or are self-help/motivational. Anything related to art, sound or programming barely gets upvotes.

Browse by new though and you’ll see it. Post after post with zero comments about questions or problems that are answered in the docs.

And the people who can actually answer have been driven away by the money-chasers.

Re: Learn to code, ignore AI, then use AI to code even better

#79

Post by major505 »

globnomulous wrote: post #73
major505 wrote: post #30

The best part of AI in my opnion is not having to search through documentation. You have any questions about a specific funcion in this lib? Just ask, and will do the search for you, and provide an quick example of use. This shit is magical.

Trying nine wrong solutions to a problem before finding the tenth, which actually succeeds, is frequently an essential part of the learning process, in writing natural language as in programming.

I agree. But is usefull when your studing. When you actually need to delivery something, is great.

I used to know java sdk by memory whe I was young. Nowdays theres too many languages I have to remember. Easier just to ask copilot.

Re: Learn to code, ignore AI, then use AI to code even better

#80

Post by greenchair »

dansmyers wrote: post #65

I'm a professor at a small college. I teach intro programming most semesters and we're now moving to using tools like Cursor with no restrictions in upper-level courses. "How do students learn to code nowadays?" - I think about this pretty much all the time. In my intro class, the two main goals are to learn about structured programming (using loops, functions, etc.) and build a mental model of how programs execute.…

appreciate the insight
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