The "paint-the-fence" analogy is spot-on, but AI can be the spotter rather than replacement - use it for scaffolding while deliberately practicing core patterns that strengthen your mental models.

I suspect when it comes to human mastery there is no clear dividing line between scaffolding and core, and that both are important.

As long as you understand the scaffolding and its implications, I think this is fine. Using AI for scaffolding has been the key thing for me. If I have some obscure idea I want to build up using Django, I braindump to the model what I want to build, and it spits out models, and what not.

Course, then there's lovable, which spits out the front-end I describe, which it is very impressively good at. I just want a starting point, then I get going, if I get stuck I'll ask clarifying questions. For side projects where I have limited time, LLMs are perfect for me.