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5 points numcap | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.2s | source

I am a third year Software Engineering Student, is it still worth it to build projects from scratch or should I just use AI (claude, chatGPT, lovable, etc.) to build them for me? I have built plenty of Projects from scratch, trying to learn the ins and outs of languages and frameworks, but it seems like everyone and their mother uses AI to just build stuff for them. So is it still worth it to learn or should I just become a prompt engineer?
1. moomoo11 ◴[] No.45622928[source]
If you’re gonna do stuff just for the sake of doing stuff..

You should learn software architecture design patterns so you don’t get rekt by having AI “build stuff” because then you’ll end up with “shit” not “stuff”.

Usually you learn that over a period of time when you do actual professional work but now you might have to dive into it immediately.

Start with basics. Use distinct layers. A service layer for business logic that calls a repository layer that deals with only data. Use single responsibility principle so your methods do one thing only. AI will happily jam a bunch of shit into one method.

Once you have some ground game, then you can have AI go crazy because you’ll be able to define some documentation for it to follow. You’ll end up with a sane, testable, and manageable codebase. If you’re smart about it you’ll probably learn a ton too and become far more effective.