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Comment by mehagar | Hacker News Reader

I've been using AI tools to brainstorm approaches and sometimes generate code, but actually doing the typing myself. That way I'm less likely to forget the mechanics and programming language over time.

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One approach you can use is to ask it to never write the code for you, which forces it to explain and then once you try the idea by coding yourself you get a better understanding of it. I use this approach with code I am required to maintain. It still bites me sometimes because the models still mixes a lot of incorrect information (usually just stuff that was correct in the past but is incorrect now). For throwaway and easy to verify scripts I ask it to generate, but I do ask to avoid over engineering and trying to catch all corner cases cause in scripts I prefer just letting things error as they are better understood as a step that failed. I also avoid languages I find hard to read (like powershell) and prefer to generate things that are short to fit in the monitor so I can read everything and understand (python, bash, batch are my goto scripting languages).

Same. Most of what I do is ask for an implementation plan, with minimal code, or no code, or pseudocode, and then write the actual code myself. This is for open source work, where the entire point of my enjoyment is that I write the code myself. I honestly wouldn't bother being an open source maintainer if the entire thing was just prompting an LLM to write code, and then reviewing it. That doesn't sound fulfilling at all.

If this was an actual paid job, I do wonder how that would change my LLM use. The reason I'm a software developer at all is because I love the craft. The act of building, of using my brain to transform ideas into code... that's what I enjoy. If it was just prompting an LLM, would I still do that job? I don't know. I'd probably start looking into the idea of switching careers, at least.

I have asked more than a few dozen people on this, and the answer after some probing is that no other knowledge based career exists that one can move to which is not exposed to AI. While many talk about moving to a labour oriented career, no one has actually done this in my immediate network and friend of friends network. It's day-dreaming in my opinion.

Same. I've also configured the system prompt to never give me a full solution or write a code for me. So whenever I ask it a question it produces a short 10 line example or even a pseudocode. This is far easier for me to reason about.

I still reject > 50% of AI suggestions, because they're too mediocre, like moving code for no reason or sometimes it is just plain wrong.

The thing is why would forgetting even matter if the AI can just remind you of anything that you forgot?

Remembering and understanding aren't the same thing. Merely reciting facts doesn't automatically give you the ability to apply those facts to solve problems.

You can just keep asking questions till you understand it

Claude code is insanely useful for explaining other peoples code

This is exactly what I do. I'm glad I'm not the only one.

Me too, ... more or less. I'm mostly still typing, sometimes copy-and-pasting with typed changes, and rarely copy-and-pasting verbatim. With the caveat that in some cases, like prototypes, proofs-of-concept, and porting code between languages; then maybe many lines are copy-and-pasted verbatim.

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