The AI revolution is reshaping job profiles and workflows at a breathtaking pace. It forces us to acquire entirely new skills—yet at the same time, it provides the very tools that make this learning journey more efficient, accessible, and inspiring than ever before.
This is the story of my own learning journey.
I’ve been closely involved with digital transformation and AI development since their early days. But this time, I wanted to dive much deeper: into programming, agent technologies, and AI-assisted development.
So, as a non-programmer, I enrolled in the Udemy course “Coding with AI agents from the CLI, using Anthropic’s Claude Code”. The course promises to teach you how to build a fully functional online radio station with Claude Code—production-ready!
While I have some programming background (from the days of C, Visual Basic, and HTML), I certainly didn’t meet the official prerequisites. This course takes you into the deep end: setting up virtual machines with Ubuntu, navigating the terminal, installing packages, debugging errors. In short: I was out of my depth.
What looks simple in the course videos (“download, install, go!”) quickly turns into a real challenge. Missing dependencies, broken automation routines, Mac-specific quirks—you name it. On top of that, Claude Code – like any large language model – is non-deterministic. That means my results often looked quite different from what the instructor showed in the video.
I needed guidance, a mentor who could explain database options, architecture principles, and debugging strategies. That’s where ChatGPT and Gemini entered the picture.
Learning Companion, Coach, and Sparring Partner
Anyone who’s ever tried solving complex coding issues via Stack Overflow or Reddit knows: it takes hours.
For me—balancing a full-time job—this simply wasn’t an option.
With ChatGPT and Gemini, however, I had a patient, structured learning companion available 24/7. I was often amazed by the clarity and depth of their explanations. Despite the occasional pitfall (more on that later), these tools unlock entirely new learning paths, especially for people stepping into complex technical fields from non-technical backgrounds.
In my case, we built a web-based radio station that streams lossless audio, displays playlists, and offers volume control. The first prototype was running after ten minutes—impressive!
But the result was still raw: duplicate play buttons, unsynchronized volume controls, messy code.
That’s where the real learning began. With ChatGPT as a guide, it wasn’t about following instructions blindly, rather it was about understanding, improving, and questioning the process.
Human Creativity: Still Irreplaceable
Despite their brilliance, these AI coaches don’t think for us. Without curiosity and “out-of-the-box” thinking, you’ll easily get stuck in repetitive loops.
A good example: the browser inside my virtual machine (Firefox) refused to play music. According to the chatbot, missing audio/video codecs were the cause. So we installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled – again and again. But the idea to simply try a different browser? That had to come from me.
Ironically, even that didn’t work (Chrome, Chromium, Brave—all failed for different reasons). The final working solution also came from me: playing the radio station through my Mac’s native browser, and linking it to the VM environment.
And it worked! Thanks to chatbot guidance, but born from my own idea.
That’s the key lesson: AI coaches are powerful partners, but they don’t replace creativity or critical thinking—they amplify it.
My Takeaway
The combination of AI assistance and human curiosity unlocks extraordinary potential—both professionally and personally.
ChatGPT and Gemini are true catalysts for learning and growth, as long as we stay engaged, critical, and creative.
And that perfectly mirrors our evolving role in the digital workplace: human and machine, working together, each doing what it does best.
By the way, I also use chatbots as sparring partners for my hobbies—like mineralogy and geology. Whether it’s crystal systems, chemical reactions, or geological processes, having an “on-demand professor” available at any time makes learning an absolute joy.
