[simonw]

If I had four hours to dedicate to this particular learning project I would still use LLMs to help me along the way, with the expectation that I'd learn more from those four hours than I would if I'd spent the same amount of time deliberately not using LLMs to help me.

We've been given a tool that lets us ask questions in human language and get back answers that are correct 90% of the time! And that remaining 10% means we have to engage critically with those answers, which is a useful learning trick in its own right.

[beasthacker]

Hypothetical for you:

Learn more if you tried to figure it out yourself for 3 hours then used the LLM for the last hour to unblock/check your work? Or learn more by utilizing LLM for help the whole four hours?

My own experience is what I learn from an LLM sticks better if I take the former approach.

[simonw]

Depends on the task and my goals. If it was something new to me that I wanted to learn really deeply - and I had the four hours to spend - I might try the LLM-free route for the first three hours like you suggest.

If I found myself needing to do anything unrelated to the learning task, like knock out a quick Bash script, I'd still call on the LLM to get me out of that and help me stay focused on the new skill though.