Learn Python with Claude in 2026: build real skills, not AI dependency

A junior colleague showed me his Python code last week. Clean, well-structured, type hints everywhere, impeccable docstrings. I asked him why he used a defaultdict instead of a regular dict with .get() . Silence. He didn't know. Claude suggested it, he copied it, it worked. Three months of "AI-assisted development" and he couldn't explain a single decision in his own code. That's the trap. AI writes correct Python faster than you. If you let it do the thinking, you become a prompt operator, not…