Did AI make me a better programmer? A worse one? A more dangerous one? Yes, yes and yes. In a way.

Better

It certainly has allowed me to fail forward faster - and I haven’t been to Stack Overflow (literally like 3 times) since its inception. I’ve picked up React and Node an order of magnitude quicker than I would have been able to in days of yore.

For any given function, it is leaps better. Write a for loop by hand (or using intellisense) faster than AI. I’ll wait. Even if you’ve practiced code katas and can type 120 words per minute - you’re still not on pace.

Worse

One big caveat, the training data favors code from a few years ago which in tech is a lifetime.

I also care less about the quality of code, the craftsmanship; The sloppiness has increased - which lead to real world costs and technical debt.

More Dangerous?

Yes. I like to think that I read (and understand) every bit of code that I execute from AI, but I’ve probably hit F5 on some stuff I didn’t read or only gave a cursory glance. And I bet I’ve introduced a bug or two more than I may have pre-AI.

Conclusion

We are married to AI now. Its productivity gains cannot be denied, nor can its downsides.

Nobody will ever write code the same.