this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
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I can't code (well). I was hoping AI could be a kind of auto-didactic teacher for me. Dreams crushed, I'll have to learn it all the hard way after all. Unfortunately "the hard way" is after I'm already fried from working all day...
Even still I've only ever used the term "vibe coding" ironically and I'd never try to use generated code in production.
AI can teach you to code, as long as you don't switch off and stop using your own brain. Use it as a search engine instead of a teacher, always confirm original sources.
My problem is that I can't trust it not to hallucinate something that I can't catch it on. If it tells me something wrong, and I don't catch it, that might stick and be really hard to unlearn. It's more like a study guide that's only semi-reliable, and I don't like unreliable information.
What exactly are you trying to learn by the way? Web dev or more backend stuff? Systems and infra programming?
There are a lot of guided resources that can take you through learning that don't involve generating a lot of random text.
That's probably part of the issue too - no direction. I think I'd enjoy working with databases, so I've been thinking about DBA; I just have no idea what the day to day looks like for a database admin and the unknown is scary. I'm quite familiar with HTML already at an intermediate level, but I think I want to stay away from having to write JavaScript for production, so almost definitely not web dev 😅
I worked as a DBA for a while, I got into it by getting into a niche database system (Apache Cassandra) at a startup for a PoC and then the local megacorp was desperately needing someone with that experience.
The day-to-day was mostly these things:
It was a very slow job, with nothing to do all December - since there was a code freeze - for example. That said, it's essential to understand Linux on a deeper level to be a DBA, like one interview question was "you have a 2TB disk with 400 gigs of data on it, yet the OS is complaining that the disk is full, what is the likely issue and how do you debug it".
Thank you for that write-up! Understanding Linux more deeply isn't a barrier to me. I'm now quite certain DBA is my next goal - it really does sound like an evolution of what I've been doing so far. I'll look around on Coursera for some certs that might convince my current employer I'm serious about helping manage the database.
Also, since it was offered I'll take it as a bit of practice:
Question mark against things that seem like possible causes, but I'm not sure if they are. Most of these would probably show the space as used rather than free, but did I miss checking anything major that I wouldn't find with a bit of searching?