[albedoa]

So...are you able to articulate what you have learned about web development through LLMs that skimming MDN wouldn't net you?

Your "strong" disagreement and claim that you were able to learn so much about web development by using AI should be able to withstand simple and obvious followup questions such as "like what?".

[briandear]

“Tell me how MVC works” is far better than reading MDN documents. “Show me how to build a basic command line application.” “Tell me about polymorphism and give me some examples on how to use it.” “Teach me the basics on how to build an authentication system.” An LLM is great at that.

Reading MDM docs doesn’t put any context around what you’re reading. And reading all the docs doesn’t teach you any more than reading a dictionary teaches you how to write.

Docs are a reference, they really aren’t a place to start when you don’t know what you’re reading. Besides it’s boring.

You don’t learn Russian by reading Tolstoy. You read Tolstoy once you have some idea of what the words mean.

[albedoa]

Everyone understands that, Brian! If i told you that "I was able to learn so much about Russian by using AI", would you expect that I SHOULD or SHOULD NOT be able to tell you something about what I've learned without writing multiple paragraphs about something else entirely? We are now four levels deep from the actual question.

[nathanasmith]

My experience using LLMs to learn is similar. When I read MDN or some O'Reilly tome I get a lot of information but it's in the general sense. I can use what I've learned to build some specific project and it'll work but because the book isn't tailored to the specific thing I'm doing, there will often be a much better way. The LLM on the other hand gives an answer as specific as I'm willing to give it context for and since I know software engineering as a discipline I know when the specific suggestion from the LLM is far superior to the more general method learned in the text book.