I understand and debug my own code, but I still feel like crap relying on AI for new problems
Junior dev here is it normal to feel like shit when I use AI to code?
I'm a junior programmer/software engineer. I can code, I ship stuff, and I debug most of my own bugs without help. But the second I hit something I've genuinely never seen before, my brain just blanks. I try to think at first but nothing so i just go straight to AI.
I do understand the code it gives me I read it, I could explain it back to you but there's still this gross feeling afterward, like I cheated somehow. Like I didn't "earn" the solution.
The other thing: sometimes I know exactly what I want to build and how the pieces should connect, but I still freeze on how to actually start. Just staring at an empty file.
Is this normal for junior devs? How do you deal with the AI guilt, and how do you get past the blank-page freeze?