There is a quiet shame around AI in a lot of coding communities. Use it and you did not really learn. Avoid it and you are somehow more legitimate.
That framing costs beginners a year of progress for nothing.
The skill is direction, not typing
Anyone can ask a model for code. Very few people can read the result, spot the bug, refactor it into something maintainable, and explain why the architecture holds under real traffic.
That judgement is what we teach. AI writes the first draft; you decide whether the draft deserves to ship.
Fundamentals still matter
You still learn state, data modelling, authentication, and deployment properly. AI just removes the part where you spend three days stuck on a typo.