Kerrick 11 minutes ago

So far I've skipped learning it entirely. For things I want to learn, I learn the old school way--maybe with an LLM as an unreliable thesaurus and/or second search engine (where I distrust its output, but read its links). For things I want to just get done, I use an LLM. It's something close to blind trust, but not completely.

For example, I've used LLMs to write ~20KLOC of Rust in the past few days. I'm having it make Ratatui bindings for Ruby. I haven't ever learned Rust, but I can read C-like languages so I kinda understand what's happening. I could tell when it needed to be modularized. I have a sneaking suspicion most of the Rust tests it's written are testing Ratatui, rather than testing its own bindings. But I've had the LLM cover the functionality in Ruby tests, a language I do know. So I've felt comfortable enough to ship it.

nottorp 3 hours ago

Will you remember it if you don't "break your teeth" on it though? At the same level as the things you're already an expert on?

  • Kerrick 9 minutes ago

    I'm a big believer in desirable difficulty for learning. But I'm a big believer in reduced difficulty for non-learning-oriented getting-things-done.