r/AskProgrammers • u/Foolish_Profesh • 2d ago
How to not rely on code
I started coding about a year ago and fell in love with it. I found a 12 month in person course that teaches me different languages as well as work readiness for code by putting us in mock work environments. In the beginning I would jot down what I learnt and applied it to what exercises were given to me . Soon I realised the pacing was a bit much and it messed up my learning so I relied on AI to debug and give me notes for resources I did not know where to look for when I went wrong-I was still denying wanting to use AI at that point still for all my work only when really needed.
After doing projects such as e-commerce and being put into a work environment that gives us a brief to complete in 4 week with a roadblock I realised not only me but my whole team relied on AI when we were not meeting deadlines we created for that 4 weeks . I am now put into a smaller team and redoing the same briefs that we used for the working Sims but I realised it made me rely too much on AI . How do I take away this reliance on AI and go back to what I did before on just learning and doing it like how I use to .
Tl;dr : Working simulation deadlines as well as not knowing where to go for resources made me rely to much on AI for work and I want to change that and go back to how I was before.
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u/JaseciLabs 1d ago
Cold turkey works for some people but it's a hard sell when your team environment already expects AI-assisted speed, worth aiming for something more sustainable instead. Try a rule like: attempt the problem yourself for a fixed amount of time first (15-20 minutes, whatever feels real), only open AI after you've actually tried and failed, and when you do use it, ask it to explain rather than just give you the fix. That keeps the muscle you're worried about losing active without pretending the deadlines and team expectations don't exist. The goal isn't zero AI, it's AI as a last resort instead of a first instinct, that's a real behavior change you can actually sustain under pressure.