🤖 Using AI tools while learning to code, genuinely helping or becoming a crutch?

Started learning web development about five months ago now, and from fairly early on I have been using an AI coding assistant regularly alongside the actual official tutorials and course material I am working through, mostly for explaining specific error messages I genuinely do not understand myself yet, or occasionally for generating a quick starting example of some concept before I then go back and try to properly understand exactly why that particular code actually works the way it does. Lately though I have started genuinely worrying whether I am relying on it a bit too much at this specific early stage of actually learning, noticing that when I hit a genuine problem now, my honest first instinct these days is to ask the AI tool directly rather than actually trying to properly work through the problem myself first for at least a reasonable amount of time before reaching for outside help of any kind. Tried a small deliberate experiment last week specifically, working through an entire smaller practice project completely without using any AI assistance whatsoever, and it was noticeably slower and considerably more frustrating in the moment, but I did genuinely retain the actual solutions and underlying concepts noticeably better afterward compared to problems I had previously solved with heavier AI assistance throughout the process. A more experienced developer I know, someone with several years of real professional experience already, said she personally still uses AI tools constantly and extensively herself in her own actual daily professional work, but specifically pointed out that she already has the underlying fundamentals genuinely solid first, so for her it now functions purely as a real speed tool rather than as an actual substitute for fundamental understanding the way it might risk becoming for someone still early in the actual learning process itself. For people who learned to code more recently themselves, alongside these AI tools being widely available essentially from the very start of their own learning journey, how did you personally find the right actual balance here, and did you deliberately limit AI use early on yourself, or did it genuinely not end up mattering much either way looking back on it now?