Why AI Tools Might Hurt New Developers More Than Help

AI-powered tools like GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, CodeWhisperer, Cursor, Codeium, Tabnine, etc., are revolutionizing the way developers write code. With just a prompt, they generate full functions, classes, and even entire applications. Sounds like a dream for beginners, right? Not necessarily. In reality, these tools can *do more harm than good* for new developers who haven’t yet built a solid foundation in programming. While experienced devs use AI to *accelerate* their work, beginners often use it to bypass learning, which can seriously stunt their growth. In this post, let’s explore why AI might hurt new developers more than help, and how to use it wisely in your learning journey.

AI is a Crutch, Not a Coach

Imagine you’re a brand-new developer just starting to learn JavaScript. You’ve barely wrapped your head around loops and arrays, but you stumble across ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot and see how easily they can write entire functions just from a sentence like *“sort an array of numbers in descending order.”* You’re amazed. You start using it for everything — from writing basic functions to generating full components or even solving coding challenges. At first, it feels like magic. You're moving fast. Your code “works.” But here’s the problem: you're not actually learning how to code — you're learning how to **prompt** a coding assistant. And the moment something goes wrong — which it will — you're stuck. The AI gave you a working answer before, but now it’s throwing an error. You don’t know why. You don’t even know where to start debugging, because you never understood how the code was structured in the first place. This is where AI becomes a **crutch**.

Coach Guide — Crutches Support

A real coach helps you grow. They push you, challenge you, correct your form when you're wrong, and encourage you to try again. Coaches *don’t* do the work for you. AI, unfortunately, doesn’t coach. It doesn’t know your level, your struggles, or your knowledge gaps. It won’t stop and say, “Wait — do you even know how recursion works before I write this recursive function for you?” It just gives you answers. Whether you understand them or not.

What Happens When You Skip the Learning Phase?

Here’s what often happens to new devs who rely too heavily on AI, they can’t write code from scratch without assistance, they struggle to explain what their own code does, feel lost when interviewed or challenged with variations of the same problem and they build apps but can’t fix them when something breaks. What feels like progress is really just propped-up productivity with no long-term skill development. Instead of jumping straight into AI-assisted coding, new developers should treat it like a reference, not a shortcut. Ask AI: “Can you explain what this code does?” Not: “Write a full login form in React with JWT and validation.” That small mindset shift — using AI to clarify, not code for you — can make all the difference.

You Can’t Debug What You Don’t Understand

AI-generated code isn’t always right. It can miss edge cases, suggest outdated methods, and introduce silent bugs. Experienced developers can spot these issues immediately. They know how to verify the code, tweak it, and ensure it fits their use case. New developers, however, might not even recognize that there *is* an issue. They’re trusting the AI blindly, which leads to frustration when things don’t work, and worse, they can’t fix it. Debugging is one of the most essential skills in programming. If you can’t break down problems, trace logic, and identify what’s going wrong, you won’t grow. And AI won’t teach you that skill — only practice and experience will.

Productivity Tools Work Best When You’re Already Productive

AI tools are designed to *enhance* workflows — not replace the need to understand them. For experienced developers, AI helps with: * Speeding up repetitive tasks * Generating boilerplate code * Writing test cases quickly * Exploring alternative syntax or patterns But these benefits only work if you already: * Know what you want to build * Can evaluate whether the AI suggestion is good or bad * Understand the architectural and logic decisions involved For beginners, the illusion of productivity can be misleading. They feel fast and efficient but skip foundational learning. The danger? They're not becoming *better developers* — they're just becoming *faster copy-pasters*. ---

Real Learning Requires Struggle

We all know the feeling of banging our heads against a problem, and then the lightbulb moment when it finally clicks. That’s where the real growth happens. AI removes a lot of that struggle. It gives you the answer too quickly. But in coding, the struggle is where you learn to research and read documentation, develop logical thinking, and master problem-solving under pressure.  By short-circuiting that process, AI also short-circuits your learning journey. It’s like skipping all the training but still expecting to run a marathon. You might survive a short sprint, but you’ll fall apart when things get tough.

So, Should Beginners Avoid AI Completely?

AI isn’t inherently bad for beginners, but it must be used intentionally. Use AI to explain code line-by-line, get summaries of concepts, compare solutions with your own, translate your logic into actual code after you've designed the solution and avoid using AI to solve assignments or challenges without trying yourself first, generate full apps from scratch without understanding each part, bypass learning the basics like loops, conditionals, functions, or data structures.

Final Thoughts

AI is a tool, not a teacher. If you're just starting your dev journey, resist the urge to rely on AI for everything. Focus on learning the fundamentals, solving problems on your own, and building real experience. Once you’ve got a strong foundation, AI becomes an incredible force multiplier. But until then? Stay hands-on. Struggle a little. Learn the hard way. It’s worth it.

Are you a beginner using AI tools to learn? Have you found them helpful or harmful? Share your experience in the comments and tag me on social media. Let’s talk!