ai, you, and me

Apr 9, 2026

so i use ai quite a lot these days. i know it has a bit of a bad reputation.

broadly speaking, this is a good thing. when you're trying to learn, ai has the potential to rob you of critical lessons in your coding journey.

so why do i use it?

the short answer is because i (kind of) know what i'm doing - i've been coding for 15 years. i'm at the point where i've written the same line of code 1000s times in 1000s different ways.

don't use ai to solve problems that you haven't already solved before.

learning comes from the cognitive pain you experience bashing your head against a wall on a problem. if you offload this part of the journey to ai, you won't learn.

but honestly - this is hard. i give in to the vibes sometimes, but i have to pull myself out of it.

ai is a great assistant but a pathetic teacher. use it to move faster, not to think less. if you haven't felt the "cognitive pain" of a problem yet, you aren't ready for the solution. keep bashing your head against the wall. it's the only way to make sure the knowledge actually sticks.