A word about AI
In the last year or so, the world has witnessed the advent of AI. There are quite a few options on the market now, some of which provide tools for programmers.
The fact that there are instruments able to write pieces of code does not invalidate any of the reasons why one should learn a programming language. AI tools are far from being able to do what a person can do. They are not perfect, and at the time of writing, they are mostly used to help with repetitive and sometimes menial tasks.
Several IDEs can be integrated with technologies like GitHub Copilot (and the like). Visual Studio Code, Zed, IntelliJ IDEA, and PyCharm, all provide ways to enhance their capabilities with AI plugins. There are even some new IDEs that were designed specifically around AI features, such as Cursor.
While we do use such tools in our work, we feel it is crucial to stress how important it is for you to try and understand the code examples from this book on your own. Please try to work them out without help from an AI assistant, as that will be an integral part of your learning process.
