{"id":4904,"date":"2026-09-04T00:49:41","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T03:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tucumandevelopers.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/04\/learning-to-code-in-the-age-of-ai-advice-from-a-top-udemy-instructor\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T00:49:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T03:49:41","slug":"learning-to-code-in-the-age-of-ai-advice-from-a-top-udemy-instructor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tucumandevelopers.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/04\/learning-to-code-in-the-age-of-ai-advice-from-a-top-udemy-instructor\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning to Code in the Age of AI: Advice From a Top Udemy Instructor"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<section data-clarity-region=\"article\">\n<div>\n<p><a href=\"\/education\/category\/interviews\/\">Interviews<\/a> <a href=\"\/education\/category\/jetbrains-academy\/\">JetBrains Academy<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>What should a beginner developer learn in order to keep up in the AI era? This is one of the most debated questions in tech right now. We got in touch with <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/linkedin.com\/in\/arditsulce\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ardit Sulce<\/a><\/strong>, a Python educator with over 650,000 students on Udemy, and talked about the value of struggling when learning something new, the changing role of teachers, the skills junior developers need, and why students should learn with professional development tools from the very beginning.<\/em><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h4>Ardit Sulce is a Python programmer and top Udemy instructor with 10 years of teaching experience.<\/h4>\n<p><span>He holds a master\u2019s degree in Geospatial Technologies from the University of M\u00fcnster, Germany. Ardit is also the founder and main developer of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.activeskill.dev\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span>ActiveSkill Dev<\/span><\/a><span> \u2013 a platform for learning coding and software development with AI as a personal tutor. <\/span><span>Ardit believes that the best way to learn Python is by building real applications. His courses combine beginner-friendly explanations with hands-on exercises using professional tools \u2013 from automation scripts to AI agents.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<h2><strong>In this interview, we cover topics such as:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>How AI is changing the role of teachers<\/li>\n<li>When beginners should \u201ctough it out\u201d and when they should use AI<\/li>\n<li>Three skills junior developers need in the AI era<\/li>\n<li>Why you should learn in a professional IDE<\/li>\n<li>A three-stage path for learning to program with AI<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>The teacher\u2019s role in the AI era<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Q: Ardit, you taught programming before generative AI became part of the everyday development workflow. How have students\u2019 expectations of learning programming changed?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ardit Sulce:<\/strong> I teach programming mainly through video content. You\u2019re not just hearing what a virtual environment is; you\u2019re watching someone create one, activate it, and use it in real time. That format still works, and students still love it.<\/p>\n<p>What has changed in the world of AI, though, is the number of questions I receive from students. I get 5\u201310 times fewer questions a day than I did before. When students get stuck, they just go to AI and get answers in seconds. Before, they would post the question in the course Q&amp;A and wait hours for me or a teaching assistant to respond. That waiting is gone, so they stay in the flow of learning instead of stopping at every obstacle. The questions that still reach me tend to be the bigger ones: <em>Which path should I take?<\/em> <em>Is this project good enough for my portfolio?<\/em> <em>How does this fit into the larger picture?<\/em> etc.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201c<i>AI absorbed the small questions, and what\u2019s left for the teacher are the ones that actually require judgment.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>There\u2019s one more expectation that\u2019s new. Students now expect AI to be part of the curriculum. Before AI, a Python course was about Python.&nbsp;Today, learners want to know how Python and AI fit together, how to use AI tools to write code faster, but also how to build things with AI: apps that use language models, agents, automations.<\/p>\n<p>A course that ignores AI feels outdated to them, and rightly so. That\u2019s the biggest shift I\u2019ve had to make as an instructor \u2013 not in how I teach, but in what I teach.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q: If AI can answer those small questions instantly, what remains of the role of a programming course and teacher?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ardit Sulce:<\/strong> As mentioned earlier, students can get answers to their questions instantly. However, when you know nothing about a topic, you don\u2019t know what to ask. This is where a teacher is still crucial. A beginner doesn\u2019t know that virtual environments exist, so they\u2019ll never ask about them. They don\u2019t know what they don\u2019t know.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201c<i>The role of a course is exactly this: It\u2019s a curated path through a territory the student has never seen.<\/i>&nbsp;\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>AI is phenomenal at answering questions, but someone still has to know what questions are worth asking, and in what order. That\u2019s the teacher\u2019s job.<\/p>\n<p>We always had good and bad teachers in school. Both had the same books and the same blackboard, yet with one of them the hour flew by, and with the other you counted the minutes. The good ones had an energy that made you curious to listen. This seems to be hard for AI to replicate.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>When struggling helps you learn<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong>Q: Learning to program has always involved frustration. Which parts of the struggle should AI remove, and which should it preserve? How can beginners tell the difference?<\/strong><\/p>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201c<i>The keyword here is \u2018struggle\u2019. Learning has to be a struggle. If there is no struggle, you can\u2019t learn anything.<\/i>&nbsp;\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The mind has to struggle to absorb something new. You can take a programming book and read it casually at the beach, but you\u2019re not going to learn anything from it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201c<i>You need to take that book, open the IDE, and put in the work \u2013 replicate the results from the book, experiment with the code, fail, and try to find what\u2019s wrong with your code. It\u2019s only then that you learn anything.<\/i>&nbsp;\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The confusion, the error messages, the twenty minutes spent on a missing colon \u2013 that\u2019s not an obstacle to learning. That <em>is<\/em> learning.<\/p>\n<p>One thing is for sure, though: Typing code by hand is going to be a thing of the past \u2013 but only among professionals. For students, the only way to understand programming is to do things by hand first. You need to write syntax to understand what you are doing. So the struggle of manually typing code is worth preserving for students, but worth eliminating for pros. It\u2019s not about the task; it\u2019s about what stage you\u2019re at.<\/p>\n<p>So how can a beginner tell the difference between struggle that teaches and struggle that just wastes time? My rule of thumb is simple: If the struggle is about understanding, keep it; if it\u2019s just friction, remove it. Struggling to understand why your loop runs one time too many? Keep going \u2013 that\u2019s how you learn. Fighting a broken driver installation, a cryptic setup error, or an outdated tutorial? Let AI handle it. There\u2019s no lesson there.<\/p>\n<p>Ask yourself, <em>once I get past this, will I understand programming better, or will I just be back where I started?<\/em> If solving the problem teaches you something you\u2019ll reuse, struggle through it yourself. If it\u2019s a one-time roadblock, hand it to AI. Beginners tend to get this exactly backward. They let AI write the loop, then spend an evening fighting the driver. It should be the other way around.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Q: If working code is no longer sufficient proof of learning, what should educators and employers look for instead?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ardit Sulce:<\/strong> Honestly, working code was never good proof. It was just the cheapest thing to measure. Students copied from Stack Overflow long before ChatGPT existed, and every teacher knew it. AI didn\u2019t create the problem. It just made the shortcut so fast and so clean that we can\u2019t ignore it anymore.<\/p>\n<p>The first thing I look for is whether the student can explain the code \u2013 not with formal terminology, just plain questions: <em>Why is this a dictionary and not a list?<\/em> <em>What happens if this file doesn\u2019t exist?<\/em> <em>Why is this chunk of code inside a function?<\/em> <em>What would break if I moved this line above that one?<\/em> If a student used AI to write the code but can answer questions like these, they learned something. If they can\u2019t, they merely \u201cdelivered\u201d something.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d advise employers to do roughly the same thing. Stop asking job candidates to build; ask them to review. Hand them a file of AI-generated code with a subtle problem in it \u2013 an off-by-one, a silent exception swallow, a function that works but does the wrong thing on empty input \u2013 and see whether they notice and how they explain it. Or sit with them and debug something face-to-face. Watching how a person narrows down a problem tells you more in twenty minutes than any take-home assignment ever did.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Skills junior developers need in the AI era<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3><strong>Q: What skills will help early-career developers stand out?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><strong>Ardit Sulce:<\/strong> I would focus on three.<\/p>\n<h4><strong>1. Reading code you didn\u2019t write<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>Writing is cheap now; <em>judging<\/em> is the job. You\u2019ll spend your days looking at code that came out of a model and deciding whether it\u2019s good, does what you asked, and holds up when the input triples. Most beginners have never really read code \u2013 they\u2019ve only written it. Flip that around: Read codebases on GitHub, revisit your old projects, and read what the agent produces instead of blindly accepting it.<\/p>\n<h4><strong>2. Saying precisely what you want<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>We used to write programming. Now we \u201cspeak\u201d programming, and most people are terrible at speaking it. They say, <em>build me a login system<\/em>, get something generic, and blame the model. A good prompt is a specification: what the code does, what it must not do, what happens at the edges. We used to call this \u201crequirements\u201d, and it used to be someone else\u2019s job. Now it\u2019s the main interface.<\/p>\n<h4><strong>3. System-level understanding<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>And the third is exactly that system-level understanding I described above \u2013 knowing what an app is made of and how the pieces fit together. There\u2019s no shortcut here, and that\u2019s why it\u2019s the differentiator.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201c<i>The first two make you productive with AI; the third is what makes you the person AI works for, instead of the other way around.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<h2><strong>Learning with professional tools<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3><strong>Q: Your latest video course, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.udemy.com\/course\/ai-developer-bootcamp\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gen AI Engineer Bootcamp<\/a>, is paired with <a href=\"https:\/\/academy.jetbrains.com\/course\/32260\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">hands-on practice in PyCharm<\/a>. What can learning in a professional IDE add in the AI era?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><strong>Ardit Sulce:<\/strong> Video is passive by nature. There\u2019s a gap between <em>I watched someone do that<\/em> and <em>I can do that<\/em>. You have to get your hands dirty and code in an IDE. That\u2019s why the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.udemy.com\/course\/ai-developer-bootcamp\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Gen AI Engineer Bootcamp Udemy video course<\/a> is paired with hands-on practice in PyCharm \u2013 I didn\u2019t want people to finish a lesson feeling like they understood it. I wanted them to immediately be in the same place I was, with the same tool, figuring things out firsthand.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s also a more practical reason.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201c<i>A gen AI engineer doesn\u2019t work in a browser tab. They work with API keys in environment files, virtual environments, dependency conflicts, packages that break between versions, and agents that write files into their project. All of that lives in an IDE. If I teach the concepts but leave out the environment, I\u2019ve taught half a job.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Then there\u2019s what you get from writing, running, debugging, and modifying code \u2013 none of which a video can give you. Writing reveals which parts you only thought you understood. Running exposes you to the real environment: dependencies, virtual environments, package versions, configuration files, API keys, and tracebacks. Debugging teaches you to investigate instead of starting over. And modifying code shows whether you understand the project well enough to change it without breaking something else.<\/p>\n<p>That final step is particularly important in the AI era. Generating an initial version of an application is becoming easier. Understanding existing code well enough to change it safely remains a real skill.<\/p>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201c<i>There is also a practical reason to learn inside an IDE. AI coding agents work with actual projects and files. They create and modify code inside the development environment. If you are not comfortable navigating that environment, reviewing changes, running the project, and investigating problems, you are not really supervising the agent. You are only accepting what it produces.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<figure><video controls=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.jetbrains.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/20260903-0825-38.2863097.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n<h2><strong>The new learning path for junior developers<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3><strong>Q: Based on all of this, what should the learning path look like for someone starting today?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><strong>Ardit Sulce:<\/strong> This question has concerned me since it became clear that generative AI could produce complete scripts. The interface is changing. Previously, developers expressed instructions mainly by writing programming languages. Now, they can also describe their intent in natural language and ask an agent to implement it. But programming is still the common denominator. You still need to understand how a program works, how data moves through it, how the components fit together, and how to determine whether the output is correct.<\/p>\n<p>Syntax may be getting easier to produce. Understanding the system isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>I would divide the learning path into three stages.<\/p>\n<p><strong>1. Writing syntax by hand.<\/strong> Write real code, i.e. small programs, in a proper IDE. Not because you\u2019ll do this at work, but because this is where the mental model gets built: what a variable is, what a loop does, how data flows through a program. Don\u2019t skip this stage.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. Using AI as a tutor.<\/strong> Move to projects of increasing size, with AI explaining what you don\u2019t understand along the way.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. Using AI as a co-worker.<\/strong> Let AI write parts of the code while you review what it produces. Each project should be slightly bigger than the last: a script, then an app with a database, then something with users, something deployed, and something that talks to an API. That progression is what turns syntax knowledge into system knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>The old way was to spend years mastering syntax and hope the architectural understanding shows up along the way. The new path is shorter but flipped: learn enough syntax to understand what\u2019s happening, then focus on understanding systems \u2013 because that\u2019s the part you\u2019ll actually be paid for.<\/p>\n<p>Manual coding is your homework while you\u2019re still in the learning phase. Then, when you start your career, you\u2019ll be ready for the architect\u2019s work. Someone starting today isn\u2019t at a disadvantage compared to those of us who spent twenty years coding manually. They\u2019re skipping a stage that, frankly, was never the point.<\/p>\n<p>We want to thank Ardit for sharing his experience and perspective on teaching and learning programming in the age of AI.<\/p>\n<p>Are you a programming course creator interested in making your courses more hands-on with professional development tools? We\u2019d love to explore ways to collaborate \u2013 whether you already use JetBrains IDEs or are considering bringing them into your teaching.<\/p>\n<p>Through the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jetbrains.com\/academy\/course-creators\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>JetBrains Course Creators Program<\/strong><\/a>, we support educators with tools, resources, and opportunities to reach more learners. Explore the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jetbrains.com\/academy\/course-creators\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">JetBrains Course Creators Program<\/a> or contact us at <a href=\"mailto:education@jetbrains.com\">education@jetbrains.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The JetBrains Academy team<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"#\"><\/a> <\/section>\n<div>\n<p><h2>Discover more<\/h2>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Fuente: <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.jetbrains.com\/education\/2026\/09\/03\/learning-to-code-in-the-age-of-ai-advice-from-a-top-udemy-instructor\/\">Art\u00edculo original<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Interviews JetBrains Academy What should a beginner developer learn in order to keep up in the AI era? This is one of the most debated questions in tech right now. We got in touch with Ardit Sulce, a Python educator with over 650,000 students on Udemy, and talked about the value of struggling when learning [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"webixso_pending_account_ids":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jetbrain"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tucumandevelopers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tucumandevelopers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tucumandevelopers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tucumandevelopers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tucumandevelopers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tucumandevelopers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tucumandevelopers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tucumandevelopers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tucumandevelopers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tucumandevelopers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}