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by gtowey 154 days ago
I'm curious, what stopped you from learning the information you needed to complete these bigger projects before LLMs?
3 comments

For me, mostly time, time to learn it, time it takes to complete these projects. We have so many other things to do, why bother learning the details of a specific language or tool if AI can do it in minutes. More time to learn about architecture/management/ux/design/guitar/etc.
But couldn't you then extend the argument to everything? Like why learn design if AI can do it in minutes? Or why learn guitar when AI can create music in minutes?

Its always worth learning something if you enjoy it, the same applies to code and languages. You can definitely create better apps knowing the details of a specific language than not knowing it and I think its still worth doing if you care about the ultimate quality of your work.

I think architecture and UX have more impact on the quality of the software you write for the end user than the details of a specific language. And when you're creating guitar training software, music and guitar playing knowledge has more impact on the quality of the software, than the details of a specific language.

When working with an LLM i care more about prompting it about software architecture, software UX, and the domain we're working on, than the details of the language it uses.

> I think architecture and UX have more impact on the quality of the software you write for the end user than the details of a specific language. And when you're creating guitar training software, music and guitar playing knowledge has more impact on the quality of the software, than the details of a specific language.

hard disagree on both points. You're talking about "impact" but surely you'll be a better coder if you can actually, you know, code? The other stuff is important sure but if you literally cannot read the code and just pleasure yourself with dreams of architecture and UX, what you're generating is 99% bad quality.

But prove me wrong, would love to see something you've made.

Here’s something I had Claude code make recently: https://github.com/ako/backing-tracks
honestly pretty good
> Its always worth learning something if you enjoy it

This argument is repeated often but what I think you're missing is that if you want to listen to music you put on the radio, you don't record an album.

Sure if I want to enjoy playing guitar I'll do that, but that's not what I'm paid to do and you're not paid write code. Nobody but me wants to hear me play guitar and nobody but you wants to look at your beautiful code.

Yup, Time.

I'm confident I can do anything with enough time. But I only have so much.

AI is going to enable so many more ideas to come to fruition and a better world because of it!

Suppose that when someone is retired, there is more time doing stuff, but time is running out…

If someone is in their 30’ or 40’ planning to work the next 5+ years on a project is no problem, even if it takes 10+ years in the end.

For the ones over 65 or older, it’s a different story…

I can tell you from my perspective that it really is a different story when you're over 65, I'm 73 so it's even more different. It's obligations that distract keep coming. I'm just having fun with it at this point. I just can't imagine what you guys are facing right now. Some existential s**. It's like you were swinging through the trees and all the trees disappeared now you got to learn how to live on the desert. You can do it!
I'm such a noob for an OFG; I responded to you at the top of the post. TL;DR is so much stuff got in the way, mostly of my own creation. A lot of excuses but all seemed reasonable at the time.