[dosco189]

I am using it to learn programming. I have no technical background but know enough about technology to be able to talk about the problems abstractly. Because my knowledge of the space is not via formal education and training, I have gaps in my knowledge and do not know deeper details about how ideas connect with each other on a deeper level.

GPT allows me to ask questions and provide the right kind of "connecting" bridges between two concepts I was not earlier aware of. It has made recursive forms of learning very easy for me, when I can articulate the "what" but lack a clear understanding of "how".

[AlexTrask]

My advice to learn programming is to avoid shortcuts and do the hard things like read the documentation

[baq]

This absolutely isn’t how humans learn. Humans learn by doing. Once you grasp the basics, you can read some documentation. Otherwise there’s not enough ground for the docs to make sense.

Once you’re comfortable with the basics by all means read the table of contents to know what you don’t know. I recommend this especially when dealing with databases, it’s amazing how many people never advance past the apprenticeship part of learning software engineering.

[orbital-decay]

> This absolutely isn’t how humans learn. Humans learn by doing.

That depends on both the subject and the person. Some learn better by understanding the fundamentals first. Some subjects (in CS/SE as well) might not even be approachable without it.

[tasuki]

I don't think they were asking for advice.

The way dosco189 is using GPT is perfectly fine. They aren't letting GPT do all the work for them, they're letting it explain how concepts relate to each other, something you often will not find in the documentation.

[hughesjj]

Bro documentation is notoriously terrible in almost all spaces.

Gpt3.5 is like super Google, and gpt-4 is like a polymath in everything intern. Learning has never been easier for me, I'm stoked.

[barrenko]

Also documentation is, how to say, heavily styled in a sense.

If you disliked a certain teaching style before you were basically screwed. I've learned some languages purely because the documentation was fun for me personally.

[Sai_]

100% agree. Back circa 2010-2011, Apple’s obj-c documentation held back my iOS coding career. Coming from javadocs, I just couldn’t wrap my head around apple’s style.