I would also like to add as a bonus section, but for those that say they would never have been able to do X or Y without AI, hear me out for a second.

I’m not gonna go on a tirade about how you should’ve been able to, or that you’re a bad person for asking AI for help. Just trying to put a new perspective through it, as someone who used to use it compulsively (OCD be damned).

I’m not sure if it is the case for everyone, but at least for me, using AI was mostly an insecurity thing. Things I’d usually be more comfortable looking up the internet, documentation, or asking people, I’d just ask AI. I just thought “I’m not that good at reading docs/looking up stuff”, or “People will just get annoyed and bothered if I ask too many questions”. AI never gets annoyed and “listens”. Plus it’s a relatively good search engine replacement for the median people.

The only reason I’m bringing this up is because I’ve noticed similar behaviour from the kids I taught coding. They would ask chatGTP to generate code for a cool idea they had, because they didn’t feel like anything they would be able to do would be good enough. It’s like they felt that the stuff they would be able to do was too lame, so might as well generate the code (the hours of debugging time this caused 😭). To contrast to that, back when I started python, I was stoked to make a base 10 decomposition program that only went up to 10^3. It was fun to figure it out, and I wanted them to have fun seeing the ideas and ways they thought to implement it working. I also hear a lot of this almost self-defeatist attitude when people talk about using AI (and I’m not talking about in the workplace. That’s another can of worms).

When I worked on my OpenBSD server, I thought I was “too unskilled” to read the documentation for setting up ikeV2, so I asked AI. After several back and forth of frustratingly explaining the issue, only to get stuff that doesn’t make sense, I gave the documetation a more in depth read, and managed to figure out the issue. This type of exchange happened several times, and after realising I was just using it as a glorified rubber duckie, I just flat out deleted my account. I would’ve wasted less time, energy and ressources if I had the courage to ask for help, and I feel a bit more ashamed about not doing so earlier

All this to say: don’t be afraid to ask help on forums, look up stuff on the internet, or ask someone you know for help on a task. It doesn’t help that people are in a tight schedule nowadays, and that workplaces expect mote output because of AI. But if you do manage to find some time for your personal activities, don’t hesitate to take your time, and try some of the above.