I am entering my 8th semester of majoring in Computer Science, and I find myself with an identity crisis as a developer. I find myself asking whether I am actually a programmer or not and what the title even entails in the year 2025.

Just recently, I created an AI chatbot within a span of two days. It answers according to a given PDF, and I created it primarily with the help of Python and Flask. I employed the “huggingface/sentence-transformers/msmarco-distilbert-base-v4” model with DeepSeek R1, and even developed an Android app interface with EditText, Send, and TextView elements. For the server portion, I chose ngrok. The program works fine and produces the desired output, but I could not help but experience this identity crisis. The reality is, 99% of the architecture and coding came from the help of AI. I do not really understand how everything functions behind the hood or what every library accomplishes, so the question lingers: am I even a programmer?

Here’s what I know:

Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA):

Arrays, Strings, Linked Lists (Singly), Stack, Queue (Simple), Linear Search, Binary Search, Bubble Sort, Selection Sort, Insertion Sort, Merge Sort, Quick Sort, Radix Sort, Binary Tree (Traversals: Inorder, Preorder, Postorder, Level-order), Binary Search Tree (BST), BFS (Breadth-First Search), DFS (Depth-First Search), Dijkstra’s Algorithm.

programming Fundamentals (Java, Python, JavaScript):

Variables and Data Types, Operators, Input/Output, Control Structures (if-else, switch, loops: for, while, do-while), Functions, Data Structures (lists, dictionaries, collections: lists, tuples, sets, dictionaries, collections, etc.), Object-Oriented Programming (classes, objects,

Database Knowledge (MySQL):

\-CREATE TABLE, ALTER TABLE, DROP TABLE, RENAME TABLE, NOT NULL, UNIQUE, PRIMARY KEY, FOREIGN KEY, SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, AND, OR, NOT, IN, BETWEEN, LIKE, INNER JOIN, LEFT JOIN, RIGHT JOIN, Aggregate Functions (COUNT, SUM, AVG, MAX, MIN).

My Realit:

I find it tough to tackle LeetCode problems, managing to solve only a few easy ones. When I sit down in a blank IDE, I often feel lost

I am able to get my projects to work, but the issue is I rely so much on the help of the AI to do so. Alright, I am able to debug minor bugs every now and then, but for the larger assignments—e.g., adding new functions or editing the coding—I end up inserting the errors into the AI programs like ChatGPT until I somehow come up with the answer.



Here are my questions:

m I the only one to feel this disconnection between what I know and what I am capable of doing?

To those of you who happen to be working developers: how much do you produce from scratch as opposed to Google or AI?

Is it enough to just understand the concepts if there are tools out there that can generate the code for us?



How do I bridge this gap prior to embarking on the job hunt?



Why I'm sharing this:

I lok for genuine insights from:

People who were successful with this challenge.

Those who flourish with the help of an AI-augmented development ecosystem.

Identity crisis as programmer, need guidance