Should You Learn AI Coding, or No-Code Tools in 2025?

Once upon a time, building things on the internet was for a small group of programmers - and if you didn’t know how to code, you couldn’t create.

Since then, the internet has come a long way - and thanks to tools like WordPress, Webflow, Wix, Squarespace, among hundreds of others - coding is no longer a requirement to create things on the internet.

Now, it’s 2025 - and there’s an elephant in the room. AI.

Thanks to the strides in AI over the past couple of years, we’re seing products like Cursor, Bolt, and Lovable - which enable people to build ANYTHING through a simple conversation with AI.

So, knowing that, it may seem like you should just skip no-code tools and just jump straight into AI - but, you’d be making a mistake.

The difference between no-code tools and AI

When you’re building something with a no-code tool, you’re still DOING the building - the tool simply translates the code to you in a more intuitive way - but, unless you set it up, nothing’s going to happen.

AI on the other hand takes a simple, plain-text question and converts it into action. Sounds even easier right? Well… kind of.

How AI works

AI is amazing, and I use it every single day. When ChatGPT goes down, I feel like I’ve lost my own brain - however, ChatGPT and other AI tools have an inherent problem - they’re people pleasers.

If you ask AI to write some code for you, it will try to do exactly what you asked - but, what if you don’t even know what to ask?

AI won’t elaborate and try to understand what you truly need - it will simply try to do what you said. Think about it this way - could you directly manage a developer and tell them how to do their job? If not, you also likely couldn’t manage AI and tell it how to do it’s job.

See, AI won’t just tell you you’re confused - instead, it will more than likely try to find some way in which you are right, and then double-down on that - and while that can be OK for a couple prompts, once you have a bit of a bigger project, you’re going to end up feeling lost in your own codebase - paralyzed, slow, and unable to make edits. And that just defeats the purpose of AI.

Why you should learn no-code tools

The thing about no-code tools is that they force you to think and get creative - if you’re trying to figure out how to strap together Webflow, Memberstack, and Make to build a social media platform, for example - you need to consider your front-end, your back-end, and how data is going to be sent between them.

While you may just feel like you’re learning how to do something with Webflow, Memberstack, and Make, you’re actually learning a far more powerful lesson - how websites and web apps function.

See, like I said, no-code tools are essentially just translations of code - but, under the hood, they all use the same thing - code. So, by learning how a no-code tool works, you are actually learning the fundamentals of how the web works.

So… I shouldn’t learn AI?

You absolutely SHOULD learn AI - see, AI is changing the way we learn, and changing the way that we digest information. Today, you’re watching me on YouTube, and tomorrow, someone might learn this information through a LLM that learned from me. Learning how to use AI is one of the most important things that anyone working on a computer can learn in 2025 - however, when you’re working with AI, think of yourself as the captain, and AI as your loyal crew member. If the captain is misguided, the whole ship will sink.

When it comes to building sites and apps with no-code tools vs AI, let me pass you a piece of advice as someone who does both.

Don’t build anything you don’t understand.

The goal for every app or website is to succeed and to have users on it, but, when the users come is also when the bugs come out.

Think about this - you built an app and it has a dashboard - people start paying and actually using it (yay).

Then, all of a sudden, your dashboard breaks. Customers are complaining and asking for a refund. Where are you? Crying in the corner because you don’t even know what file your dashboard lives in, let alone why it broke.

While this little horror story sounds scary, it can absolutely happen to you too - and, if you start coding with AI and launch a production app, this can be your fate.

Always experiment, be careful with production

Does this mean you shouldn’t try building an app with AI? Absolutely not! It just means you shouldn’t try to turn it into a business if you don’t even understand the inner workings of your product.

The path

Like I said, working with AI is a dream when you KNOW how to direct it - so my advice for you is simple.

If you’re just getting started building things on the web, you need to first understand - and, in my opinion, the best way to understand web apps is to build them yourself with no-code tools. Once you’ve got the hang of building with your favorite no-code stack, give AI another go - and chances are, you’ll feel more familiar, more confident, and ready to build something real.