Studying methods accuracy against the day-to-day job of 2026 programmers
Greetings, this is my first post.
1. Am I studying right?
I have been learning the basics of JAVA, and I've started a "baby" project of a bank simulation where I apply what I learn into the program, as means to genuinely understand code. AI can help in teaching me a new construct ¹, what it is, what it does, how it's written, and the applications of said feature.
1.1 My Learning Method
My uncertainty comes from the term of having understood the feature to the core, including the exact syntax, for example:
• Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);
• I don't just memorize blindly, I know what each word means, so remembering it is way easier and comes naturally to me, even when I spent half a month without writing code.
2. But is it the right/recommended way to learn programming like this?
In countless threads and videos I've heard over and over again that code is no longer memorizing syntax, but applying AI to do the repetitive job, and humans take care of the advanced topics an AI cannot grasp. So my question is if I'm studying the right way.
Do programmers know the exact syntax in their minds? If not, do they Google the syntax structure, while knowing the pseudocode/ idea itself? I really need to know, I could be in time to change my methods and adapt them.