#1. AI is a powerful calculator in math class
In school, you only use a calculator after years of doing arithmetic by hand.
Even with a calculator, you can't simply enter an entire problem or equation to get an answer. You still work through the steps before speeding up the answer. Use AI the same way.
Build skills, then leverage AI.
#2. AI is like an assistant nurse in an operating room
A surgery isn't a task for a single person.
In a surgery, there's a nurse, an anesthesiologist, and a surgeon. I only know from binge-watching House M.D., but operating rooms are full of specialists.
The nurse helps to monitor the patient.
The anesthesiologist keeps the patient asleep.
But the surgeon coordinates the procedure and is always in charge.
The surgeon doesn't tell the nurse,
"Act as an expert surgeon and run the procedure. Check your steps and don't make mistakes."
You're the surgeon and AI is your supporting team.
Like calculators and operating rooms, coding with AI requires real skills first. I wrote Street-Smart Coding to help you build them. Because you need more than syntax to stand out.
Top comments (4)
The "sparring partner vs. oracle" distinction is one I've been trying to articulate to junior devs — thank you for naming it cleanly. One technique that operationalizes the sparring mode: before asking the LLM anything non-trivial, write your own 2-sentence hypothesis first, then ask for feedback on it. You still think, but you get a second brain checking your work. The oracle mode kicks in only when you genuinely have no context to anchor against (new domain, unfamiliar API). Treating those as two different tools with different prompts has been a real productivity bump.
I really like the idea of he oracle...especially if we ask it to challenge our assumptions and find flaws in them
My only use of AI is documentation. Documentation is many times frustrating, scattered over multiple places... You can ask the AI and it gathers the pieces for you. That's a fantastic job, and one in which statistical aproximation actually makes sense.
I love AI when exploring a subject for the first time to build an overview of the subject. I think I don't use search engines that much anymore.