AI can write the code. I built a free site for people who still want to understand it

AI assistants can now write working code in seconds. So why learn programming at all?

Because working code and good software are not the same thing. Someone still has to decide how a program is structured, notice when an answer is wrong, and keep the code easy to change a year from now. If you can't judge what the AI gives you, you can only hope it's right.

I built PromptCookbook for people who still want to learn that.

How it works

Each lesson covers one concept and has three parts:

1. A short explanation in simple words.
2. A prompt you can open in Claude or ChatGPT with one click, or copy anywhere else.
3. The code and its output, so you can compare them with the AI's answer.

That comparison is the point. Why did the AI choose a different approach? Is its version better or worse? Asking those questions teaches you more than copying an answer.

HTML and CSS examples run right on the page. For Go, TypeScript, Python and PHP, you copy the code and run it on your own computer.

Beyond the syntax

Courses start from the basics, but the Go, TypeScript, Python and PHP courses go further, into the topics that separate writing code from building software:

• Operations on collections
• SOLID principles
• Design patterns
• Big O analysis
• Unit testing
• REST APIs

Even before AI, a developer who really understood these topics and could apply them in real projects was past junior level and well on the way to a solid mid-level developer. That hasn't changed. It's also the knowledge you need to judge what an AI writes for you.

It's free, there's no account to create, and it's available in English, Romanian and Russian.

The site is brand new, so I'd really like your feedback. If you try a lesson, does the prompt-and-compare format help you learn, or does it get in the way? What would you change?