John Yamamoto

Reflection on AI Usage

12 May 2025

Introduction

AI is taking education by storm. People feel very strongly about this topic. Some are fearful that it will strip the next generation of important skills such as writing. Others are hopeful about the capabilities it holds for our human kind, such as improving efficiency and combatting climate change. In the subject of Software Engineering, AI can be used in several ways. It can firstly be used in a generative manner. It can wholly perform the creation of code for an intended function in Software Engineering such as the creation of a web page. It can secondly be used as a guide, making suggestions to the user for what approach they should take when writing code or structuring their repository for example. Throughout this semester, I have use Chat GPT as my primary source of help in both of these areas.

Personal Experience with AI

In the Software Engineering course I took this semester: ICS 314, there were many different areas where AI could be used. I will go through some categories and express my thoughts on AI’s usefulness in each.

  1. Experience WODs: For experience WODs, I would mostly ask Chat GPT questions of how to do things, and it would provide me with an example and I would reference that example when writing my code. An example of this could be me asking chat something like “Hi chat, how do I create the head of an HTML file?” It was very helpful and allowed me to learn a lot through the examples it provided. It was more efficient than doing google searches to find what I needed.
  2. In-class Practice WODs: I used AI for the in class WODs pretty similarly to the experience WODs.
  3. In-Class WODs: At the start of the semester, I used Chat GPT to provide me with basic examples of things such as arrow functions to help me get started on WODs for languages like TypeScript which I wasn’t very comfortable with. Later on in the semester, I didn’t use any AI for environmental reasons. I felt like there was very little cost in this area and Chat was a good assistant in helping to provide me with the reference materials needed to write good code.
  4. Essays: I did not use AI for essays because I’m pretty sure my class didn’t want me to let AI write my essay for me, and I’d rather do the brainstorming and writing myself. I feel like it would have been a waste of time and confused me more to incorporate AI into my already-formed writing process.
  5. Final Project: I used Chat GPT a lot for the Final Project. It generated a lot of code for me, and I used it a lot for debugging. It would write a lot of code for me, but it would get it wrong a lot of the times at first, so I would have to ask it things like “Would you be able to rewrite the code without putting the awaits inside of the loop?” in order to get the results I wanted. Overall it was extremely helpful because I wouldn’t have been able to produce the code that I did without it because my skills are very limited, but it did take a lot of time to direct it correctly.
  6. Learning a concept / tutorial: As far as learning a concept or tutorial goes, I didn’t use AI at all because I didn’t think to use it. I am used to going through tutorials on their own without outside reference, so I didn’t use AI.
  7. Answering a question in class or in Discord: I didn’t use AI in this area either because I didn’t do either of those things in this class.
  8. Asking or answering a smart-question: I haven’t answered any smart-questions this semester, but when looking at one of the answers related to the Playwright tests in the #smart-questions channel, I pasted it into Chat GPT and asked it to help me write tests using those instructions. I actually created a lot more work for myself by following those instructions, but chat was helpful in at least aiding me in what I was trying to do, so the benefits outweighed the costs.
  9. Coding example e.g.”give an example of using Underscore.pluck”: I used Chat GPT quite a bit in asking for coding examples, mostly during WODs or when coding, not so much for the sake of purely learning it. An example of me asking Chat for a coding example is “how does every work in ts?” I think that this is one of the ways that AI helps my learning the most, because it allows me to think on my own and to modify the code for my own uses, but it gives me a good starting place to work with.
  10. Explaining Code: There wasn’t much opportunity to explain code in the class, so I didn’t use AI in this category.

Future Considerations

I think that there is a huge future for AI in education. It can hold someone’s hand while they are learning something, and allow them to ask questions in a personal way that no other educational resource provides besides a one-on-one tutor. And this tutor is very very knowledgeable. I’m not too sure how AI will advance and how that will impact education. Perhaps it could improve its memory capability in order to have more ongoing discussions about certain projects that someone is working on.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I felt like AI was very helpful in my learning of software engineering. Without it, I couldn’t have completed my final project, and even though I didn’t necessarily write everything myself, heck there was actually very little that I wrote by myself for the final project, I still learned a lot by being exposed to the things that Chat GPT was doing, so that in the future I will be able to rely less on AI. In my opinion, AI was a great learning tool this semester, and I would like to continue using it to grow as a software engineer and overall computer specialist.