Over the past two months, I’ve been trying to learn React, a powerful JavaScript library for building user interfaces. As a newcomer to React, and coding in general (except for that one python course in every business bachelor), I quickly realized that learning React goes a lot deeper than I initially thought. With this comes the endless array of questions that arise with every new function you’re trying to write.
In the beginning, like many others, I found myself searching for solutions on forums, reading documentation, and piecing together tutorials. While these are invaluable resources, they often left me with information I found wasn’t exactly tailored to my specific questions or project setup. I would look on StackOverflow or Reddit and pray that some person from a random corner of the world had had my exact problem once before. But why search for this perfect scenario when you have a personal coding assistant that has the knowledge of all these forum users combined?
Instead of sifting through pages of StackOverflow posts or scrolling through Reddit threads, I started using ChatGPT to ask hyper personalized questions. For example, I could describe my project’s context in detail: what kind of components I’m working with, what the general goal is and just paste my entire codebase. The answers I received were tailored precisely to my situation, bypassing the need for trial and error from someone else’s scenario.
This however isn’t all rainbows and sunshine. Besides the occasional mistakes (which is to be expected), I started becoming very reliant on genAI to just create my code. Why would I try to type out and understand a function, if ChatGPT could do it perfectly and 10 times as fast. This however, does not really fit the description “Over the past two months, I’ve been trying to learn React”. I have thus been trying to limit my use of ChatGPT (in this context) to just asking questions about code I have actually written myself. This way I try to understand the code I am writing first, and if all else fails resort to my ‘coding assistant’. I feel like this is a much healthier way of “learning how to code”. I think it is really easy to make yourself believe you’re good at writing code, if you’re working with a chatbot on your side.
What do you think, what is your personal experience with ChatGPT and coding? Do you have any recommendations for LLMs to use for this besides ChatGPT? I was also thinking, will these forums such as StackOverflow disappear, why would I try to find a similar problem when I can just get the perfect answer through a chatbot? Let me know what you think!
Nice article. I am a full-stack developer (Python, FastAPI, Postgress and React) and create data-focused applications as a freelancer for companies. I think the problem you are describing is very real and I had the same problem when learning React as it is also the newest for me (including JS and TS). It is very tempting to use genAI to create the code, however, it then takes way longer to debug and it makes me lose the overview of how components work together. The road to learning a new language or framework can be tough, but I think it is necessary to know the basics. So first HTML and CSS, then JS (TS is optional) and then a framework like Reactjs. Creating code yourself helps to get the feeling of the language and understand the code. I would recommend using chatGPT to help you to learn how to code. By for example letting it review your code or by making a roadmap tailored to you for what to learn and when. Good luck with your coding journey!
I totally relate to your experience! Last summer, I had a similar challenge when building a data pipeline with basic Python skills. ChatGPT was a game changer, it helped me piece together the steps, providing explanations and code snippets that made what seemed overwhelming much more manageable. Like you, though, I had to find a balance. Relying too much on AI made me feel like I was coding, but I wasn’t actually learning. Debugging and more complex issues still required turning to StackOverflow or figuring things out myself.
I don’t think forums like StackOverflow will disappear anytime soon. The community-driven insights and discussions offer value that AI-generated answers can’t fully replace. How’s it going with React now that you’re using ChatGPT more thoughtfully?