Cancelling all subscriptions of AI tools felt good.

I started working on a new project that required different skills than I have. Using all AI tools allowed me to progress fast making something I can play with.

This is all good and great, but I lack understanding of the system I built. I reviewed all the code but it is not sticking. It is sort of “reviewer effect” where you can understand everything and you can approve the code changes, but ask me week later about the code and I won’t recall the details. This effect is amplified when you do multiple code reviews in row. It makes sense that you can’t “connect” with something you’ve just seen in an isolation.

PRODUCTIVITY DILEMMA

I’m not sceptic about the productivity aspects. You can go so fast in terms of productivity. The sense of going fast may create an illusion of confidence and gained knowledge. I felt confident instructing the AI what to do but when I turned it off and went into “trenches” it hit me. I had to re-read a lot of it from scratch. It wasn’t my code in the end.

In my case, I simply learn by doing. I tried learning with AI and I have mixed results with that but that’s topic for another post.

The time I’m going fast is the time I’m standing still in terms of learning. It looks like I can’t have it all.

Part of my noaidecember.com reflections