Richard Golian

1995-born. Charles University alum. Head of Performance at Mixit. 10+ years in marketing and data.

Castellano Français Slovenčina

Manage subscription Choose a plan

RSS
Newsletter
New articles to your inbox

Article

AI's Unexpected Role in Enhancing My Coding Skills

ChatGPT as SQL coding mentor
Richard Golian
Richard Golian · 3 165 reads
Hi, I am Richard. On this blog, I share thoughts, personal stories, findings and what I am working on. I hope this article brings you some value.
Listen to this article
0:00 / 0:00

I Was Wrong

When I first started using ChatGPT for SQL queries, I was blown away by how it transformed hours-long tasks into mere minutes of processing. However, This staggering efficiency brought an unexpected quandary. Did I still need to improve my skills if AI could outperform me so dramatically? Initially, I saw little reason to compete against such precision. Yet, this was a fundamental misunderstanding on my part. As I integrated AI more deeply into my work, I discovered its value not just in handling tasks but in significantly enhancing my coding abilities by pushing the boundaries of what I thought possible.

Exploring the Depths of SQL with AI

ChatGPT became more than a tool; it became a mentor. As I tasked it with more complex queries, each solution it provided was not only a completed task but also a lesson in advanced SQL. This AI did not just do the work. It illuminated paths I had not even considered, turning complex data manipulation and optimisation techniques into understandable, approachable concepts.

Today, my ability to leverage advanced SQL functionalities is intricately tied to my deepened understanding of the code that AI generates. ChatGPT is instrumental in this process; it deconstructs each code line, explaining its rationale and strategy. This is not just about following steps; it is about grasping the underlying principles that make those steps effective.

Now, as I deal with more complex queries involving elaborate conditions and data filtering that require high computational effort, ChatGPT also proves invaluable from another point of view. It optimises code to ease server load and explains every step, helping me understand this area. This allows me to handle previously daunting complex tasks and equips me with the knowledge to instruct AI more effectively in the future.

Looking back on the path from doubt to reliance, I am amazed at how my perspective on AI has transformed. What began as a tool to expedite mundane tasks has blossomed into a crucial element of my professional development, pushing me to learn and adapt at an unprecedented pace.

Summary

I thought improving my coding skills was pointless when AI could do it faster. I was wrong. AI did not replace my learning. It accelerated it. Line by line, it explained approaches I had not considered. It became the best mentor I never had.

Common questions on this article's topic

Can AI actually help you become a better programmer?
Yes. In the article, what began as using ChatGPT to complete SQL tasks faster evolved into a deeper understanding of the code itself. Each solution the AI provided was not just a completed task but a lesson. It deconstructed code line by line, explaining the rationale behind each step. Research from the 2023 ACM Conference on Computing Education confirmed that ChatGPT can function as a collaborative mentor that helps developers reason, debug, and grow.
How does AI serve as a coding mentor?
In the article, ChatGPT is described as illuminating paths that had not been considered, turning complex data manipulation and optimisation techniques into understandable concepts. Rather than simply delivering answers, it explained why specific approaches work, what trade-offs exist, and how to think about the problem differently. This transformed AI from a shortcut into a teaching tool.
Is it worth learning to code if AI can write code for you?
The article argues yes, and that this was a fundamental misunderstanding corrected through experience. Initial skepticism that there was little reason to compete with AI gave way to the realisation that understanding code is what allows you to instruct AI more effectively. The deeper your knowledge, the better questions you can ask and the more complex problems you can solve together.
Can AI help with SQL query optimisation?
In the article, AI proved invaluable for optimising complex queries that require high computational effort. It not only rewrote queries to reduce server load but explained every optimisation step, helping build understanding of performance principles like indexing, filtering logic, and computational efficiency. This made previously daunting tasks approachable.
How has the perception of AI among developers changed?
In the article, the shift went from seeing AI as a threat to motivation to recognising it as the best mentor available. What began as doubt, why improve skills if AI outperforms you, became appreciation for how AI accelerates learning. The key insight is that AI does not replace the need for understanding; it compresses the time required to gain it.
What is the relationship between AI assistance and professional growth?
In the article, AI is described as pushing professional development at an unprecedented pace. The combination of AI handling routine complexity while explaining its reasoning creates a feedback loop: each interaction deepens understanding, which enables more sophisticated questions, which leads to more advanced solutions. The result is growth that would have taken much longer through traditional learning alone.
Richard Golian

If you have any thoughts, questions, or feedback, feel free to drop me a message at mail@richardgolian.com.

NEWSLETTER
What I write about, what I am working on, what I learned.
Sent the first Sunday of the month. Unsubscribe anytime.

Related articles

Which Work Will AI Not Replace?

Seventy per cent. That is where the first AI output begins, even when you give it the full company context and the best examples from the past. We are talking about the kind of output that cannot be defined programmatically. It is more complex. Often it is creative work. On one repeated type of output I reached eighty per cent within a week. Every further percentage point is harder than the one before.

10 June 2026·181 reads
Dead internet: will we return offline?

For a long time we treated the internet as the main road. The place where work and relationships happen. Yet most of what we see on it today is, or soon will be, AI-generated: text, images, profiles and comments. The internet is turning into an online game full of bots, where you cannot be sure that a human is on the other side of anything. So I ask: was the online world the main road, or only a temporary detour that part of us will return from, back offline?

7 June 2026·245 reads
What Determines a Stock Price?

In April, in the first part of this series, I wrote about an AI prediction system I had started building on my own machine. At the time the software was a few hours old and the prediction record was empty. The record since then has shown one thing: the system does not yet understand the market it is being asked to forecast. It can pull macro context, book value, earnings. But it cannot put those together into something that helps it understand the price.

23 May 2026·341 reads

More articles

The Gap Between Professionals in the AI Era

A few days ago I interviewed a senior marketer. An experienced man, years of practice. I asked him about AI. He said he barely uses it. He had one bad experience with the output and decided he was too senior for it to add value when it is not perfect. I know the other side too: professionals who automate everything that can be automated.

6 June 2026·339 reads
Europe Is Not Ready for Drone Warfare

Europe does not have the capacity to face a full-scale, mass drone war of the kind we see in Ukraine. Three dependencies weaken it: China supplies the physical material for defence systems, the United States supplies capabilities Europe does not have, and twenty-seven states cannot agree how fast, or who pays. Rearmament plans exist, but they are being carried out slowly.

31 May 2026·313 reads
Can AI Replace Human Judgement?

AI produces the graphic, the newsletter and the product page faster than a person. What is left for the one who used to do it is the judgement, knowing whether the output is good. But most people have worse judgement than AI. And whoever cannot judge quality cannot delegate either. How do you tell whether yours is the judgement a company relies on, or the kind it can replace?

30 May 2026·298 reads
Where the Money Goes When AI Takes the Work

Prague, 13 May 2026. On my way to work I started thinking about something that stayed with me for days. If most routine work on a computer disappears in the next ten years, and a large share of repetitive manual work disappears with it, what happens to the flow of money? Who pays whom for what? Which economic layers will exist, how large will they be, and what relationships will run between them? This is the six-layer map I sketched as an answer.

15 May 2026·863 reads
Building an AI Stock Market Prediction System That Grades Itself

I am building an AI system to predict the S&P 500. It runs on my own machine, uses free public data (yfinance, FRED, the Shiller dataset), and grades every forecast against reality. This series documents the build itself: the decisions, the methodology, the mistakes. What I will eventually share from the running system is a separate question, and an honest one.

26 April 2026·856 reads
AI sales forecast: 9 traps so far

Yesterday I could not tear myself away from the computer. When I lifted my head, it was half past eight in the evening. I had been sitting alone upstairs for about three hours.

25 April 2026·806 reads
Will AI take my job?

Will AI take my job? A certified Google trainer told me in June 2024 that my profession would cease to exist. Twenty-two months later, my job title has not changed, but ninety percent of what I do during the day is different. I have delegated more of my thinking to AI agents than I thought possible. I am not afraid. This is why, and what it means for anyone asking the same question.

23 April 2026·522 reads
Full AI agents or fully offline.

Four days in Catalonia. No computer, no AI, almost no social media. I bought this notebook so that I could write down what I would think about, and what I would come across and learn on the trip.

10.5.2026·577 reads
NEWSLETTER
What I write about, what I am working on, what I learned.
Sent the first Sunday of the month. Unsubscribe anytime.