AI has been around for the past few years. I wasn’t interested in it — until ChatGPT was created by OpenAI. I started using it in my day job. To be...
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Solid points, thanks for sharing. When the ChatGPT hype started I was pretty excited about using it as a coding sidekick and tutor but these days I rarely use it at all. I want to learn things and sharpen my mind in the process, it's more than just putting stuff in the editor and running it.
Terrific article, Shariq ! You eloquently express the sentiments I have (and had from Day 1 of the AI Hype Cycle) regarding ChatGPT / Copilot use in programming.
Indeed ! Not only that, but over time you actually lose (some of) those skills. Like it or not, knowledge and skills are not indelibly etched into our brains. They need constant refreshing, and this is only effectively achieved through use, and in the case of programming, active, continuous problem solving.
Using an AI assistant (or any sort of assistant), deprives you of the opportunity to do that effectively because you are not fully forging the solution, but are relying on a fancy form of autocomplete to create the solution with you. Where is the dividing line between what you want to achieve and what is suggested to you ?
A professional developer will have tools such as templates, frameworks, libraries, and generators with which they should be familiar. Combine those with your intellect to forge solutions.
In the long term, however, I believe that programmers relying heavily on an AI assistant for coding are making themselves less skilled, hence less useful, and more prone to be considered redundant.
And programming students / newbies, by relying heavily on AI assistants, are probably not going to acquire the deep insight and skills needed to be truly effective as professional software developers.
I look forward to research efforts that will investigate how AI assistants impact all these aspects of software development.
A final, personal point: I believe that intellectual laziness, in the long term, will not be rewarded.