Shadowing Practice: AI Coding Is a Dead End - Learn English Speaking with Video

you should stop using AI to write code for you.

And I'm not saying that because I'm this staunch anti-AI person.

I'm more firmly in the camp of against it.

My main concerns being the environmental ones and the IP theft over everything else.

But I'm saying it not even thinking about those things, but thinking more about your future.

And especially if you want to continue being a developer.

I know some people are feeling like the job has changed

so much that maybe they don't want to continue doing it

or they're worried that the impacts of AI are going to make it so they don't even have a job anymore.

And I completely get it that we're in this situation now where no one really knows what's actually happening.

And all of that uncertainty is very stressful.

But I do want to say that if you are worried about your job security,

that I think actually writing as much code by hand as possible is going to be a very beneficial skill.

And the reason I'm saying that is that there's a de-skilling that is currently going on.

But the problem with all of these tools is if you're not an expert in something, you're not going to be very good at using them.

And as good as they're getting, this is still holding true.

People that are experts are doing really good things with it.

And I've talked about this before on this channel, so I'm not going to continue just harping on that point.

But what I want to talk about more is the skills you build through actually writing code.

And people who are experts got there because they wrote the code.

And they went through the debugging and they did everything else.

I've done that with CSS for the past 10 plus years.

And I get asked all the time, Kevin, how do you know CSS so well?

And I say it's because I wrote so much of it.

And taught and teaching is actually a really nice trick as well.

you learn so much and make so many connections through concepts

that feel unrelated until you say them out loud

and then all of a sudden things click

but the main thing I want to get to in this

is just how as people are worried about skill de-skilling of things going on

or not even needing these skills anymore

because you can ask AI to do something is the things

that the AI are making are not perfect and there's lots of problems

that are arising from it especially if you're doing it with things that you're not an expert in.

I have this comment here that I want to read out.

This was on my video of illusions and mastery.

Part of his comment anyway, he says, I have one junior dev who says everything I do is useless bullshit

and gets all defensive when I point out even one of the many AI introduced bugs in his code.

And I hear a lot of stories of this, of junior developers that are coming in that are

so reliant on the AI that they just assume it's this illusion

and where things are happening and it looks good in the short term that they know what they're doing.

But the people that are most successful in using these tools are people who already know what they're doing.

If you're an expert in the field or what you're asking it to do, then when it is making mistakes, you're able to course correct and steer it in real time as it's doing these things.

Whereas if you don't know the subject really well to begin with, you can't actually use the tool efficiently or effectively.

And as more and more people are relying on these tools, that just means that there's this continued de-skilling that's happening.

Or maybe not de-skilling, I'm sure that has happened to a certain extent.

But I also think as new people are coming in, they're not coming with the same foundational knowledge that they once had.

And that's going to create a very big knowledge gap that's not getting filled by the AI tools

and by the LLMs and all these other things in the way that the companies are trying to sell it.

And the companies sell it as this marvelous wonder thing.

And I know that middle management loves these things because they lap up all the marketing material and then expect us to, you know, oh, it's going to make you 10 times more efficient than everything else.

And I think it can make developers more efficient, again, if they know what they're doing.

But I just really want to hammer home that idea that

if you enjoy development work and it's something that you've got into, or maybe it's something you're even looking at getting into.

I have a lot of people that are emailing me and asking me that are like, I was thinking of getting into web development and now I'm not so sure.

Thing is, look around everywhere.

It's not just web development where this is happening.

It's everywhere where this is happening.

But I think an expertise is always going to be valuable

and maybe even more valuable than it was before rather than less

but it's just about learning enough of the core language

and everything that goes along with it and the core skills and everything you need for these.

And the only way to build those is to do it yourself.

And if you're doing it with some AI speeding you along to help you try and be a bit faster, just be really careful with that.

I really think the more you can be doing by hand, the better.

And I actually think now as the prices of these tools are becoming less

and less subsidized by the companies that are making them, companies might also start rewarding employees who are actually not burning through as many tokens as possible either

so it could be a little bonus in the short term

there as well potentially as always here on this channel i'd

love to know what you think about this this is not

just i don't want to just be me talking into the

camera the comment sections of these videos is turning into a

really amazing place i don't have time to reply to everyone

there's been a lot more recently as this channel started to take off

but i enjoy reading them there's a lot of really good discussions going on, replies to other things, which I generally don't see on my tutorial videos that I do on the main channel.

So yeah, please do leave a comment if you have thoughts on this.

But I really do think that if you already know what you're doing, you are positioned very well right now.

And if you're somebody who doesn't, you know, just getting into things, start coding, start actually writing code, try not to rely on the AI tools when you don't have to, and build up those foundational tools,

because all it's going to do is help you out.

And then use all of that amazing knowledge and all these things

that you are learning to go and make your corner of the internet just a little bit more awesome.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: AI Coding Is a Dead End - Learn English Speaking with Video

Context & Background

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

What is the Shadowing Technique?