[incomingpain]

I've been coding since about 2009.

If someone were to ask me how to learn to code today. I dont know what I would say. My gut is telling me to say go into farming or marketing. vs ALL-IN. Down the rabbit hole you go.

>I often see people say that the solution is to just fully learn to code without AI, (i.e, go "cold turkey"), which may be the best, but I wonder if the optimal path is somewhere in between given that AI is clearlly changing the game here in terms of what it means to be a programmer.

You need to know the fundamentals. You probably still need to learn to code manually. Thonny is the best beginner IDE.

You will want to switch over to AI pretty quick though. As a beginner, you probably want GUI, so Antigravity, Codex, or Claude Code.

>I have shipped a few projects, I always review AI-suggested code, do daily coding practice without AI, watch youtube videos, etc. but still don't know if I'm striking the right balance or whether I can really call myself a programmer.

There is no license. You can call yourself that whenever you please. Here's a relevant hacker news blog though: https://paulgraham.com/identity.html

>I'm curious how you have all handled this balancing act in the past few years. More concretely, what strategies do you use to both be efficient and able to ship / move quickly while ensuring you are also taking the time to really process and understand and learn what you are doing?

Once you really get your AI coding skill up and you know your model. You have the rocksolid architecture/design. You tend to be more concerned with the model deleting 1000 lines accidentally.

But then openclaw bursts onto the scene and we dont need to know how to code anymore? Like I give it a task, ask if it has a skill, it says no. It goes to gemini cli, creates its own skill. It's now giving me updates on changes. I didnt do anything.