The risk is real

You can produce working projects for months without building the ability to debug, design or reason about code. It feels like progress right up until you meet a problem the tool cannot solve, which is every interesting problem.

Use it as a tutor, not a vending machine

• "Explain this error as if I have never seen it"
• "What does this regex do, piece by piece?"
• "Review my code and point out problems, do not rewrite it"
• "Give me three approaches and their trade-offs"
• "Ask me questions until you are sure I understand joins"

Write first, then compare

Attempt the problem yourself, then ask for a critique. You keep the struggle (which is where the learning actually happens) and still get the feedback.

The self-test

Close the tab. Can you rewrite what you just shipped? If not, you have delivered something you do not own.

What still has to be yours

• Deciding what to build and why
• Judging whether an answer is correct
• Debugging when nothing matches the documentation
• Security and data decisions
• Talking to the person who is paying

These are the parts that make someone employable. The typing was never the valuable half.