It Takes So Much Code

I’m learning like never before. It’s like I’m on a rocket ship. I’ve taken programming courses in the past, even gotten pretty far into Harvard’s famed CS50 course, but never have I learned this much about programming this quickly.

It’s a somewhat unexpected side benefit of AI programming: Because it generates code so rapidly, you’re exposed to everything it takes to build an app in a tiny amount of time. I may not understand exactly what every line of code does, but I grok the important concepts. You need a backend, a frontend, a database, components, utils, services, tests. This goes here, that goes there.

And I know I’m learning because, despite having been a tech writer for seven years, I’ve had several “revelations” about programming in the few weeks I’ve been using AI to help me. My biggest one so far is: It takes so much code.