That is actively engaging your brain, just at a very slow pace with a very slow feedback loop. Dijksta's "I had everything worked out before I wrote the code,

That is actively engaging your brain, just at a very slow pace with a very slow feedback loop. Dijksta's "I had everything worked out before I wrote the code, because the computer didn't exist yet" is the same. It's like working mathematics out: that's not "just reading", it's actively engaging. Actively writing. Completely different from the passive consumption of AI output. > Of course you can learn coding by studying the theory without practising. It's just a lot less fun. No you can't. When you first started an editor or IDE you wrote some vague code-shaped junk that probably wasn't even syntactically correct, and didn't learn programming until you practised. Of course you need to learn some some theory from a book or instructor, but that's not the same as actually learning something.