I’ll bite - I’ve been a dev at a new company for about a year and a half. I had mostly done front end work before this, so my SQL knowledge was almost nonexistent.

I’m now working in the backend, and SQL is a major requirement. Writing what I would call “normal” queries. I’ve been reaching for AI to handle this, pretty much the whole time - because it’s faster than I am.

I am picking up tidbits along the way. So I am learning, but there’s a huge caveat. I notice I’m learning extremely slowly. I can now write a “simple” complexity query by hand with no assistance, and grabbing small chunks of data is getting easier for me.

I am “reading, debugging, and maintaining” the queries, but LLMS bring the effort on that task down to pretty much 0.

I guarantee if I spent even 1 week just taking an actual SQL class and just… doing the learning, I would be MUCH further along, and wouldn’t need the AI at all. It’s now my “query tool”. Yeah, it’s faster than I am, but I’m reliant on it at this point. I will SLOWLY improve, but I’ll still continue to just use AI for it.

All that to say, I don’t know where the future goes - our company doesn’t have time to slow down for me to learn SQL, and the tool does a fine job - it’s been 1.5 years and the world hasn’t ended, I can READ queries rather quickly - but writing them is outsourced to the model.

In the past, if a query was written on stack overflow, I would have to modify it (sometimes significantly) to achieve my goal, so maybe the learning was “baked in” to the translation process.

Now, the LLM gives me exactly what I need, no extra “reinforcement” work done on my end.

I do think these tools can be used for learning, but that effort needs to be dedicated. In many cases I’m sure other juniors are in a similar position. I have a higher output, but I’m not quickly increasing my understanding. There’s no incentive for me to slow down, and my manager would scoff at the idea, really. It’s a tough spot to be in.