The opening question of “How are you using AI in your project (or another one)? What are some pros and cons? Has it made you a better programmer?”, for me is interesting. I started my programming journey with no ChatGPT/AI to help me and I am very glad that these tools weren’t readily available at that time. I was able to actually learn coding concepts and data structures.
The pros of AI that I have experienced started at my internship I had this past summer as this tech company had an internal version of ChatGPT that they encouraged you to use heavily. I did. I was able to make great progress on what I was working on and finish a working MVP but I feel I overused this tool and my personal coding skills took a decline. So the pros are you can move fast and get working projects and especially debug much quicker than on your own. However, you develop bad habits of using AI so often to help that you miss out on valuable learning.
Overall I feel I became a better developer in terms of what I am able to create and the speed at which I can move on developing programs. At the same time I am not as confident at coding as I was before I used AI during the internship. I also feel that anyone who uses these tools at the start of their computer science or programming journey are much less independent to develop programs if they are unable to use AI to guide them.
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