10x learner
AI's true value is in helping us be 10x better versions of ourselves
AI is like lightning in a bottle, and if you’re not careful you can end up worse off after you use it than before. CTOs get worried that programmers will get lazy. Teachers think students will forget how to write properly.
Not without a seed of truth, but frankly overblown.
Honestly, it’s about how you use it.
You can use it to replace a part of you and let it atrophy. Or you can use it to augment and get stronger. But the folks who are scared only see the former, and do not have the imagination to know the latter.
Or rather, skill issue… when it comes to using AI.
Yes I use AI to help me code 10x faster. But I also get it to help me learn. I become a 10x learner, not just a 10x programmer. I ask AI for the code, then I ask it to teach me what it is line by line. I ask it to explain methods I don’t know. I ask it to reference the codebase and iterate the code based on the code patterns already in the codebase. That helps me learn how my client prefers to code. I ask it to refer to documentation so that it’s following best practices. Then I learn those best practices. There’s a bug and I highlight the entire file, and AI explains to me what possibly went wrong, and how I can fix it. From my mistakes I learn to be better.
Best of all, my code mentor—the AI—has infinite patience and energy. There’s no question too stupid, no problem too long or tedious to work through. AI doesn’t have other things to do, other commitments or tasks to worry about, or any emotions that you got to manage. It never tires. It is 100% focused on you, and you alone. That’s an impossible ask of any human person, even from bosses, your team leads, your code bffs, or even your closest loves ones like family.
I think this is the true value of AI.
To help us be 10x better versions of ourselves.