> Am I thinking about this the right way? At what point does it make sense to start using these tools more freely without worrying about handicapping my learnin

> Am I thinking about this the right way? At what point does it make sense to start using these tools more freely without worrying about handicapping my learning? None of us can see the future so it's all just bloviating, but let me give you my two cents as someone who's been programming since I was a kid and went the long way around starting with assembler: it probably mostly depends on what kind of programmer you want to be. If you're in CS for the career and you have other things you want to do that have nothing to do with technology after the 9-5, then it's probably not going to be a problem. There's a lot more to software engineering than the code and getting good at those areas - like solving non technical coworkers problems with software - is just as important as writing the code. Most code is also not high-risk and doesn't need to be perfect, just maintainable. Learning the skill of translating requirements to LLM conversations now may well pay dividends in the coming decades because it's pretty obvious that LLMs are here to stay. If you really like programming, want to be an architect later in your career, or want to be the technical cofounder in a successful tech heavy startup or something, then you'll want to minimize your use of those tools to rubber ducking and minor questions. There's a lot of value in developing "grit", that may very well be hampered by use of LLMs. You need to absorb a lot of foundational knowledge so that you can make intuitive decisions about what the LLM is writing. You might be able to use an LLM as the primary guide to developing that knowledge, but it's risky. To be honest, when I was younger I figured all the people who started learning in college and didn't know how the low level basics of CPUs or memory worked would be at a disadvantage, but that has proven to be dead wrong. The majority of people did just fine using Python or Javascript without any of that knowledge or experience and I figure it will play out the same with LLMs.