[simonw]

I agree that the only reliable way to learn is to put knowledge into practice.

I don't think that's incompatible with getting help from LLMs. I find that LLMs let me try so much more stuff, and at such a faster rate, that my learning pace has accelerated in a material way.

[gflarity]

Consider, ever so briefly, that people don't all learn the same. You do you.

[simonw]

That's fair.

Something I'm really interested right now is the balance in terms of the struggle required to learn something.

I firmly believe that there are things where the only way to learn how to do them is to go through the struggle. Writing essays for example - I don't think you can shortcut learning to write well by having an LLM do that for you, even though actually learning to write is a painful and tiresome progress.

But programming... I've seen so many people who quit learning to program because the struggle was too much. Those first six months of struggling with missing semicolons are absolutely miserable!

I've spoken to a ton of people over the past year who always wanted to learn to program but never managed to carve out that miserable six months... and now they're building software, because LLMs have shaved down that learning curve.

[theLiminator]

I think it really depends on how it's used. It's a massive accelerant if it's just helping you stitch stuff together. Or when it helps you get unblocked by quickly finding you the missing api you need.

But when it replaces you struggling through figuring out the mental model of what you're doing, then I think you end up learning at a much more shallow level than you would by doing thing manually.

[AmbroseBierce]

And that's a fast lane for security issues a plenty, when you cannot spot them because you don't even understand what each part is supposed to do.

[habinero]

That's not learning, that's building. It's like trying to learn how to draw via paint by numbers. Do you end up with something you could hang on the wall? Sure. Could you have fun doing it? Sure. Is there anything wrong with just doing that as a hobby? Of course not.

Is it a substitute for actually learning how to look at objects and break them down into shapes and color and value? No. You gotta put in the work if you want the result. Brains just work like that.

"Struggling with semicolons" isn't any different than drawing a hundred derpy looking faces that look terrible.

Ira Glass has a quote about this:

> “Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

[Herring]

I like the sentiment, I really do, but nobody (outside a phd program) pays you to learn. That's just not how society is set up. If FAANG companies could get away with hiring high school kids at min wage to prompt all day they would. We'll figure that out real quick as that exponential rises. If you don't like it, build a better society. While you still can.

[dns_snek]

Correction: Nobody wants to pay for you to learn, yet they implicitly do it and rely on it.

If companies decide that professional learning is unnecessary in the age of AI they'll be committing a horrible blunder. Their "fuck around" phase might sting, but missing an entire generation of skilled professionals is going to make our value skyrocket in the "find out" phase, a few years down the line.

[simonw]

I love that Ira Glass quote. I've thought about it a lot!

I still think paint by numbers is a valid early step along the path to learning to draw.