Where do you draw the line between learning vs just letting AI do it?
I spent 30 minutes today doing something AI could have done in seconds.
I was doing some AWS stuff, trying to find tables with similar names across two Glue databases. Went back and forth with AI on approaches, tried comm, figured out how to use it, got it working.
AI would have just done the whole thing if I'd asked.
I have this habit of wanting to actually do things myself and understand what's happening. When AI suggests something, I'll sometimes go figure it out myself rather than just letting it run. It feels like the right instinct. Like that's what good engineers do.
But I'm genuinely not sure anymore.
There's a version of this where that curiosity compounds into real intuition over time. And there's another version where I'm just romanticizing doing things myself in a world that has quietly moved on.
I heard someone say, "AI can do coding but not engineering." and I like that. But I'm not totally sure what it means in practice, when it comes to deciding what's worth doing yourself vs what you just let AI handle.
So where do you draw that line?
And yes, I had this exact conversation with AI, then asked it to write this post. The irony is not lost on me.