[abustamam]

I find it useful to use a brainstorming skill to teach me X Y Z and help me understand the tradeoffs for each, and what it'd recommend.

I've learned about outbox pattern, eventual consistency, CAP theorem, etc. It's been fun. But if I didn't ask the LLM to help me understand it would have just went with option A without me understanding why.

[ok_dad]

In my instance, I’m talking more about using library X or library Y, not the difference between using an atomic versus a mutex. I want to learn the latter, but the former isn’t something I care about.

[abustamam]

Ah, that's fair. I personally don't normally care about library usage as long as it's fairly well documented and effective (like Shadcn vs raw tailwind components vs chakra... I don't really care).

[ok_dad]

Yea I just use LLM agents as tools, I don’t kick whole features to them or have a cloud agent running all the time. I rarely use more than $100 in usage monthly, usually less than half that. I use tab completion a lot in Cursor and use agents to make mechanical changes or integrate features I don’t care about learning, like integrating several libraries together into my application. I also use it to write things I’ve already got examples for, like database APIs.

Software engineers who haven’t tried these tools don’t understand what they are, and vibe coders who never understood software are taking the mindshare in public because it sounds revolutionary to some and apocalyptic to others. You have to stop listening to the claw bros and try using these as tools yourself in small ways to see what it’s really about, IMO.

[abustamam]

Agreed; as in most things, moderation is key. It is a new tool that is here whether we like it or not. May as well learn to coexist with it, but also not defer all our thinking to the tool.