Embarking on Python: A Personal Journey and the Caution Against Early AI Integration
The best view comes after the climb
Just like hiking on the top of a mountain, the process of learning how to code in a programming language requires plenty of patience, dedication, and strength to continue trying despite continuous failure. Like any process that should bring you professional or personal growth, you need to get out of your comfort zone, and usually, that is painful. This is why signing up for the course “Introduction to Python” seemed like a risky step to take, especially because the final grade of the course will end up on the transcript, meaning that it will leave an imprint forever on my future academic and professional path.
Perhaps for this reason, but also because of the frustration of getting a continuous flow of errors while resolving the tasks, the temptation of using AI to find solutions for the first assignments was considerable. Having a tool that can recommend you a perfectly written code, that can afterward be customed to your preferences and understanding seems ideal. But it is not! Especially in the beginning of learning a new skill, it is so important to take it slow, and to make many errors, because they eventually will teach you the most. As the old proverb states “Practice makes perfect”, practice is indeed the key to success.
However, I have the feeling that AI is taking this step away, offering a shortcut, that also undermines a second essential skill for coding, creativity. So, making use of AI is an ideal short-term tool for achieving the best grades, but if your aim reaches further, wanting to actually master coding in Python after the course and become confident for a possible career in in this field, just don’t!
This is the conclusion to which I arrived during the six weeks, and in my opinion here lies also my evolution from the first in-class quiz, where I was so terrified of making mistakes that I mostly only relied on Chat GPT, to the last assignment that I completed, where I tried to only use the knowledge I gained from class and create a strategy of how I can use it most efficiently. Even if the code itself was maybe not that distinct from the very first task, the way I approached the assignment was for sure very different, as I tried to use my knowledge and logic to resolve it.
Nevertheless, we cannot just ignore the fact that AI tools exist and that perhaps they will also very rapidly improve to a level of perfection in writing code. I am sure that in the future mastering working with AI will be a requirement for any job associated with coding and programming. That’s why I am grateful that during class we always consulted Chat GPT for possible alternatives for the code we thought fitted best the task or for what we had been taught at that time. However, I think it is important to point out the word alternative, and that we as beginners should understand the foundation and basics of programming with Python so that we are able to code independently in the future.
As an example of the importance of understanding the code used, I would like to lastly talk about what I have learned from the last assignment while setting the goal of completing it with the least help from AI possible. This exercise (and the last in-class quiz as well) was an adequate summary of what we have learned in the past 6 weeks. The first part of the assignment helped me revise how to create functions and how to import, read, and write files. While trying to figure out the solution, I learned how to open files simultaneously (not one by one) and how to subtract the information that I needed line by line, by first creating a variable that split the lines in the files, and enabled me to operate with each word, as this technique transformed each of them into an individual element.
The second part was maybe the most interesting for me. After struggling with my own code and trying to find the best solution, it was so insightful to see how my classmates, who have had the same instructions and learning materials as me, have approached the assignment, some very similar to me and others adding much more individual input.
Lastly, I enjoyed the third part as it forced me to think about how AI technologies would evaluate or devaluate the work in the future, if the use of it should increase or decrease prices and where can windows of opportunity be found, in our case by plumbers in their industry but also in other ones. In my opinion, this topic will have an impact on the lives of each one of us, and for that, I think it is highly interesting to think already now about future scenarios, about how things might or might not develop and where challenges or opportunities can arise. All in all, I am happy that I took the risk and signed up for this course, where the preliminary frustration turned more and more into curiosity and excitement as pressing control-enter felt like magic when the results I expected appeared on the screen.
