Duck Debugger meets AI

Around early 2023, when ChatGPT came out, I remember my coding teacher showing the website to my class. She talked about how it can seem like the AI can have conversations. It was so fascinating, almost terrifying. She showed us how it can write code so easily, and I was so transfixed by its capabilities. Before I was introduced to this technology, I would talk to myself... A LOT... to figure out problems. I feel bad for my classmates around me... 😅 and I wonder if my teacher had her earbuds in just to listen to music or just did not want to hear my endless talking. This was also during my final semester where I was gonna be graduating soon from Sylvania Northview High School and I was getting ready for college.

I traveled to University of Toledo because they were doing student tours for the Engineering section. It was an opportunity to look at the different majors there and see what fits. For this one activity, I remember being in a room with a big net trapping a drone for testing, and the professor there was talking about ChatGPT. I raised my hand with excitement, and he told us that ChatGPT was looking at existing data, but we want to create new links of ideas and to learn. At the time, I didn't understand what he meant, but sooner or later, I came to realize why this distinction is important.

Building My Website Portfolio

Present time, when I was building my website portfolio, it was so easy to just click Copilot to fix an issue, especially in Visual Studio Code. For example, I told Copilot how I could transfer data from a markdown file to html to a page in Next.js. For a moment I had a feeling of satisfaction.

I slowly started to feel more guilty though, and I began to realize that I missed those dopamine highs when you solve code the old way. When you are frustrated and stressed about a bug that isn't working in your project, it is so easy to just go to an LLM and tell it what's wrong. There's nothing wrong with that, but from my experience, relying on AI becomes a habit. Personally, I worked on a part of a project that I used AI to clarify answers, but now I told AI how to fix this random syntax error that can be fixed easily if you look closer 😅

When I was halfway done creating my minimum viable product for my website portfolio, I had a sense of relief... but I felt empty. I was not fulfilled. I felt like I was not intentional with how I code, intentionally putting each character into the file, and that value was conflicting with my feelings.

When I was reflecting on my working processes, I noted that I could have opportunities for learning:

• Learning how to find the right npm packages on your own, researching their usages.
• Further training my "reading documentations" muscle.
• Implementing your own algorithms so you can further ingrain your learning.

At that moment I began to ponder if this approach is good long term. That was when I started to make a change.

Finding the Balance

I have personally disabled Copilot in Visual Studio Code, for now. I decided to use Copilot online instead as it creates this separation. For a moment it was alright as I was just adding content to each of my pages.

But now, I have hit a roadblock. It was something in particular with how my metadata is structured and how would that translate to my website. However, I didn't see the Copilot icon so I went to my browser. I looked up how Typescript array of objects are structured. And having that patience to learn about it, it clicked. I felt that dopamine hit. Oh I miss it. I sometimes miss myself talking endlessly to solve a problem...

Throughout the last half of making my website portfolio, I was talking to my duck plush! By the way here is my duck plush, I found him at an art fair, his name is Quackles 😀

Though it will be inevitably to use AI in the future, so the key here is that I will MINDFULLY use AI. My take is that if you understand the output AI is giving you and read through it to make sure the implementation is good, then I feel like you are making most of what AI is giving to you. Ask AI to help you understand concepts, and if you want to learn more, find reputable websites alongside so you can dive deeper into your understanding. Like imagine its a smart Wikipedia, but now look at the actual sources so you can dig deeper.

Moving On With This Experience

Especially with the rise of AI in our lives, I realize how important it is to learn the foundations. I have seen posts on LinkedIn on technical interviewers of them being frustrated that AI mostly become a first thing that these interviewees would do. I think we recognize this is a new technology. Lets give ourself compassion to learn from the mistakes because of that.

In my opinion, coding is an artform. I love how Joy Buolamwini is well known for being the "poet of code." And that idea, I take it as, in some sense, that coding is a type of poetry, an art form if you will. Like learning art, learning how to become a developer takes skill and experience. But letting artificial intelligence do it for you is not making you learn.

I want to take this experience and learn from it, especially with making a business website from scratch with a marketing student. The stakes are higher and I want to make sure I am making the best out of learning this experience.

Thank you for reading through, and please let me know about your thoughts <3