Using AI to learn to program

[Kevin.Pegg]

I'm curious of others opinions on using AI to learn programming.

My Story: I know nothing about C#, can barely do simple addition and I'm 54. Video tutorials are long and usually boring so my mind gets distracted. I still have 4 video tabs open of tutorials I had no patience to watch (Unigine how to make a car in C# was the only exception, I spent 3 days working with that video). However out of frustration yesterday on looking up how to move a simple cube across a plane without user input in Unigine and failing to find simple basic info I clicked on the AI option in Chrome. I am a firm believer AI can be a good learning tool now.

Starting with the basics and telling it "This is using Unigine not Unity" more then a few times, it started with moving a cube by itself through code with WorldTransform and quickly ended up I have a AI car build with Wheel physics from the C# video stated above, it drives by itself towards a target cube that with its own script teleports around a user-defined radius after a user defined set of time ignoring the Z axis. Upon approaching the target the car linearly slows down based on variables to stop a user defined set distance away. Currently how fast it accelerates/brakes are variables designed for an AI NPC to drive it based on said NPCs driving skill, reaction time and such. Everything is currently getting changed to a Finite State Machine to lay out the code in easier to deal with chunks. I still have to go back and figure out a left/right thing that if target is to the left its distance is not 49 but -49 and if to the right the distance is 49 (I forget why that might matter, so much in so little time). It needs to be programed why to back up and such but In 48 hours I went from nothing to this with the help of AI.

It wasn't easy and required a lot of patience. We corrected each other on all kinds of things. I was looking up API references on this site to verify the AI was confused and why it chose that method. I didn't copy/paste the code but typed it out to see what Visual Studio balked about 1 line at a time instead of a whole block. I pointed things out and the AI refactored the code throwing new things in to correct it which sent me back to the API. I learned so much in 48 hours and could correct the AI in my code when it used MathLib.EPS instead of MathLib.EPSILON- Still no clue what EPSILON does but know it exits.

Years ago I grew to hate AI after trying for days to get it to not reference Godot 3 code when I was using Godot 4 only to find out that particular AI was never updated and only knew about Godot 3.  With so little basic information available on Unigine and so much out there about Unity I started with Unity, got lost, saw what a rip-off 80% of the add-ons were and looked back at Unigine, checked the #Unigene on YouTube only to see everything 3-4+ years old and nothing about Nav Sectors. I checked the SDK samples, I knew nothing and that was more confusion. AI saved me. (Figured out Nav Sectors on my own which is usually something I don't like to do).

I don't agree with "The Big Beautiful Bill" allowing AI to be unregulated for 10 years but others thoughts on using AI like this to learn something new?