[Jackson_Fleck]

LLMs are like interactive SO without the sarcasm.

I think a lot of people who have abstract problem solving skills don’t want to make tic tac toe games and to-do lists. They just want to get on and code, building what they want. LLMs are great for throwing you in the deep end.

If the code doesn’t work and you’re in a complete mess about debugging it - that’s great. It’ll force you to think through the WHY and HOW far more carefully than writing some stupid Hello World thing or doing another tutorial. You end up reading the documents and wrestling with ideas.

Best approach I find is to throw yourself at a LLM, then backfill your knowledge with books and resources, and speak to experienced people. That way you craft your own learning experience. Especially valuable if you just aren’t surrounded by software engineers - you’re forced to learn.

[luqtas]

so basically you prompt the LLM something complex and go do helloWorlds examples on books that will teach you complex stuff

[Jackson_Fleck]

You try to build somethign complex, encounter a concept you don't understand fully, go to the literature and learn it because you need to know it, it unlocks the next step of building. Obviously you need to start the very basics with Hello World - i.e. if you've never coded before, you should grasp the very basics of how code works and how languages work. However after that, there's no need to spend hundreds of hours doing tutorials. Building a thing is always better because the problems you encounter are real.