I have found a few of my friends doing the same, and I have used AI on occasion. What I would suggest as someone who went through post secondary education without AI is to limit it, and see it as a tool. You can use it for more than code generation. I’ve used it to lay out plans in formats I don’t care to learn, but work well with CLI tools, help with debugging, and generate trivial code, like boilerplate or refactors. I admittedly am a bit of coding addict, so your mileage may vary, but i do think that it can help adjust the challenge you deal with, and, by that, give you the sense of achievement that will build a lasting joy from the process.

For Java? No equivalent. Honestly it’s kinda embarrassing how good Intellij was when I used it, at least compared to the alternatives. For other languages, depends on how much work you’re able to accept. Vim can be a large upfront cost in work, but a tailor fit result may be worth it. Them again, I will admit that I prefer the IDE (where applicable) stay minimal.

I have no formal basis for this, but I imagine that it has to do with kerning, the way the letters are shaped, and us just being used to reading them in a specific format. I suspect that the format is treated as ‘aesthetic’ to our brains, and breaking it annoys some small part of our brains.