Hey everyone, I'm looking for some advice on my coding skills and job readiness after college. I'm currently a sophomore and have been interning at an AI/ML company for about three months. My boss encourages me to use AI in my coding projects, which has me wondering if that's a good or bad approach.
To give you a bit of context, I've done quite a bit of work using AI tools. I built a convolutional neural network (CNN) to train on the MNIST dataset, created a script using OpenCV to capture and process video feeds, and even developed models to detect violence using YOLO pose estimation. Lately, I've been working on a robotics project in ISAAC sim/lab, involving sensors and collision detection.
However, here's the catch: I've relied on AI tools for about 90% of my projects. While I feel I understand the theory and components, I worry that if I had to redo everything from scratch without AI, I wouldn't be able to manage it. I've coded some smaller projects before using basic Python, but it's concerning me
Am I job-ready? What should I actually know how to do without AI assistance to strengthen my career prospects?
4 Answers
You definitely need to learn to code without AI help. While AI can speed up certain tasks, if something goes wrong or the outputs aren't scalable, you'll need to know how to fix it. This should really be a balance—using AI for prototyping but being ready to code everything yourself for production.
You should ask yourself if you or AI will be responsible when things go wrong. As a professional, you need to be the one accountable in those situations. Getting familiar with the core coding skills without AI is crucial to building a reliable career.
You need to grasp the entirety of your coding projects, not just the parts where AI can help. It's like being a car mechanic; knowing how to fix a car means understanding all the moving parts, not just computer-assisted fixes. Take some time to build projects from scratch—it'll pay off.
Just a heads up, AI tools really fall short when it comes to debugging complex code. I've had AI give me fixes that weren't even close to the problem. So, understanding how everything works behind the scenes is essential!
Absolutely! My team feels the same way; we love AI for rapid testing but go back to basics for anything critical.