Is Learning to Code with ChatGPT a Bad Idea?
I'm teaching myself Python, and whenever I run into something I don't know, I ask GPT. It explains things well and even writes examples for me, so I'm making progress really fast...
But I can't tell if I'm actually getting better or just building my copy-paste muscles. How do you all use it?
3 answers
Copy-paste muscle lol I really relate to that phrase
I did the same thing when I was teaching myself Python, and this is the approach that worked for me. I grill GPT about the concepts and why things work the way they do, but I never ask it for code. Then I open my editor and type it out myself from a blank page, and if I hit an error, I struggle with it on my own for at least 20 minutes before asking. Those 20 minutes are the key. If you ask right away, you feel like you understand, but the next day you forget it all. And with code GPT writes for you, if you comment on it line by line and experiment with things like "What happens if I delete this line?", copy-pasting turns into studying. I don't think the problem is moving fast; the standard is whether you can rewrite that code from a blank page a week later.
Well, isn't the idea that 'you have to struggle to improve' kind of outdated? These days, getting stuck on something you don't know for 3 hours is actually inefficient. The problem isn't using GPT—it's that you're not writing code yourself. There's no need to stress yourself out trying to blame GPT.