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Comment by tegeek | Hacker News Reader

I didnt know what is relational algebra is? why query plannering execution done in certain ways. What are backend storage system available in open source or commercial products. What are the traitts of each backend storage and how does that effects the replication and failover scenarios. I know all of this, I implemented a small subset of sql's relational algebra in my project and its correct and concise. I expored different backend storage systems, first tried one, then move to next and then 3rd in line, all that in span of less than a month without ever looking what code the coding agents generates.

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>I didnt know what is relational algebra is? why query plannering execution done in certain ways. What are backend storage system available in open source or commercial products. What are the traitts of each backend storage and how does that effects the replication and failover scenarios. I know all of this, I implemented a small subset of sql's relational algebra in my project and its correct and concise. I expored different backend storage systems, first tried one, then move to next and then 3rd in line, all that in span of less than a month without ever looking what code the coding agents generates.

To be as frank as possible--you "understand" these topics in the same way someone who watches pop-science videos about astronomy "understands" astronomy. That is to say, you have a surface level understanding at best.

This is the sort of behavior people have been talking about over the last few years. People confuse what the AI "understands" with what they understand, and it makes them say delusional stuff like "I learned more in the last 2 months than in 20 years."

To make this concrete, it takes someone about 4 months to go through a university course.

They might take six courses at a time.

So you are saying that you learned more than 400 times as much content as a university course?

I'm sorry but this just sounds hilarious And unlikely to most people, and it comes off a bit crazy sounding... For example, do you actually think you could even pass a single university course exam on introductory relational algebra without AI I assistance at all?

I think what is more likely is that you feel confident trying to solve problems with AI's help.

That is not learning.

To learn something, it has to be in your brain, not the AI.

Learning is not the same as becoming capable.

There's an ocean of difference between those two

You need to learn the concepts not implementation detail. If you know what is relational algebra and AI teaches you this in hours then you dont need to know the implementation details any longer. If you can borrow intelligence to solve a problem, you should do that. We, the most IT industry is already working in high level languages which is not how the computer works but abstractions over abstractions that very very few people know the entire cycle of a program how it runs. So AI is not a future abstracton, it is already here and its "intelligent" as opposed to other abstractions. Writing code or documentation by hand is gone, its past. All programming languages, framworks are implementation details and AI has already mastered them, we need to now move on to high goals than learning how to write a loop.

I don't even disagree with you here. It's something I've said in the past about things like algorithms. Sometimes knowing a surface level thing allows you to utilise it without necessarily needing to know the implementation level details.

But you did not LEARN Relational Algebra. You learned OF relational algebra. And there's a pretty stark difference there.

Seems like my point might not be getting through.

I apologize for being blunt, and I don't mean to sound argumentative here, I'm just trying to give you an outsider's perspective:

You should not tell people you learned more in 2 months than in 20 years.

That's all I meant.

It makes you sound crazy, and its also wrong.

Maybe you built more or you feel more capable than you have felt for 20 years, but you surely did not learn more.

I don't need to hear anything from you about how the capability of the average developer has changed. I'm well aware of that already.

Did your MSCS not include a course on database theory?

It's fairly standard for undergrad CS programs and most textbooks include at least a section on relational algebra.

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