[WD-42]

This is exactly how I use AI as well in codebases and languages I’m not familiar with.

I’m a bit concerned we might be losing something without the google and stack overflow rabbit holes, and that’s the context surrounding the answer. Without digging through docs you don’t see what else is there. Without the comments on the SO answer you might miss some caveats.

So while I’m faster than I would have been, I can’t help but wonder if I’m actually stunting my learning curve and might end up slower in the long term.

[bartread]

Yeah, I had that concern as well, but I tend to find that both ChatGPT and Claude do a pretty good job of explaining the issues around the solutions I'm using them for, so I think - maybe not all - but a good portion of that learning is still happening. No doubt this is a result of the way I prompt them, because it does involve a lot of discussion, iteration, and back and forth.

Of course, you do have to know what you're doing well enough to spot a hallucination, and those do occur but, I mean, how often do you go down a blind alley or rethink your approach with coding, particularly with a new platform or framework, anyway? It doesn't feel like I'm wasting a huge amount of time here.