> The marginal developer is not going to put in the effort to wield AI in a skillful way. They're going to slop their way through. It is a concern for widespread AI coding, even if it's not a concern for you or your skill peers in particular.
My mental model of it is that coding with LLMs amplified both what you know and what you don't.
When you know something, you can direct it productively much faster to a desirable outcome than you could on your own.
When you don't know something, the time you normally would have spent researching to build a sufficient understanding to start working on it can be replaced with evaluating the random stuff the LLM comes up with which oftentimes works but not in the way it ought to, though since you can get to some result quickly, the trade-off to do the research feels somehow less worth it.
Probably if you don't have any idea how to accomplish the task you need to cultivate the habit of still doing the research first. Wielding it skillfully is now the task of our industry, so we ought to be developing that skill and cultivating it in our team members.
My mental model of it is that coding with LLMs amplified both what you know and what you don't.
When you know something, you can direct it productively much faster to a desirable outcome than you could on your own.
When you don't know something, the time you normally would have spent researching to build a sufficient understanding to start working on it can be replaced with evaluating the random stuff the LLM comes up with which oftentimes works but not in the way it ought to, though since you can get to some result quickly, the trade-off to do the research feels somehow less worth it.
Probably if you don't have any idea how to accomplish the task you need to cultivate the habit of still doing the research first. Wielding it skillfully is now the task of our industry, so we ought to be developing that skill and cultivating it in our team members.