If you are not practicing an activity consistently, you'll forget some of the finer grained aspects. When I'm coding, I subconsciously create a continuous logic map. Having someone or something just generate (and generate so quickly) destroys that and makes it easier for bugs to slip through.
I mean if e.g. AI stopped existing all of sudden, it doesn't mean you would have forgot how to code and couldn't all of sudden anymore, right?
You could forget maybe how a certain lib or framework worked or things like that, or more so how you wouldn't have been up to date with all the new ones, but ultimately code can be represented as just functions with input and output, and that's all there is to it.
As in how could I possibly forget what loops, conditionals or functions are?
I haven't written code myself for 1+ year (because AI does it), but I feel like I have forgot absolutely nothing, in fact I feel like I have learned more about coding, because I see what patterns AI uses vs what I did or people did, and I am able to witness different patterns either work out or not work out much faster in front of my eyes.
A writer will never forget what adjectives, verbs, and nouns are. But if they use LLMs to write for them for years they will be worse at writing on their own.
Well, what I'm trying to say here is that coding is conveying logic, the way you'd evaluate it is how fit it is for its purpose, and if it's long term code, how well it will scale into future.
Now writing is something totally different. In some cases writing ability is not about writing, it's about your thoughts and understanding of life and human nature.
You could simply become a better writer without not writing anything by just observing.
If you are using an LLM to write, what is the purpose of that? Are you writing news articles or are you writing a story reflecting your observations of human nature with novel insights? In the latter case you couldn't utilize AI in the first place as you'd have to convey what you are trying to say within your own words, as AI would just "average" your prompt or meaning, which takes away from the initial point.
With code it's desired that it's to be expected, with good writing it's supposed to be something that is unexpectedly insightful. It's completely different.
I would disagree. If you only do X, in fact I think you will miss a lot of things that could make you better. You can become better writer by reading other great writings, if you only write yourself, you will not have the full big picture on what is possible. Then you can become better by thinking a lot, imagining a lot, etc... Same with most fields I would argue.
Although we were discussing about the decay of skill in something. While in some things the decay is super clear (as in running - pace, not the technique), I think there's many areas where there's no clear decay and other activities will actually significantly boost it, and any decay that there is, will be removed in just few days of practice or remembering.
Are we talking about observational ability, creativity, accuracy of communication or grammar here?
There's many more ways to evaluate a writer skill in terms of what they are doing vs what is coding. Coding can be creative, but in most cases you are not evaluating coding as writing, unless it's possibly technical writing, which is still different compared to coding.
Sure, you may argue that you are becomming a better editor or project manager but your skill in the craft of programming is decaying if you are not actively typing lines of code into a computer.
I don't know, I'm still seeing all the diffs and thinking - ah interesting it did it that way, I would have done it like this or that, so I would just rather say it even widens my perspective on how to code since I see so much compared to what I used to do myself. Sometimes it's better, sometimes I feel I would have done it other ways, etc. But all the diffs flying in terminal still keep me engaged, right?
Coding is a thinking avtivity. What you’ll be missing is the nimbleness in doing that activity, not the knowledge.
So you may remember all your high school math, but not doing it every day, means you are slower than some of the students. So your knowledge of programming will be there, bit you will be slower because you no longer have the reflex that comes with doing things over and over.
I feel like I have to disagree here. I don't practice e.g. multiplication or doing math in my head everyday or for years really, but I feel like I'm just as fast at it as I ever was. In fact whenever I have tried things like Lumosity or brain benching games, that I used to do when I was younger, I'm actually faster than when I was younger, despite not having practiced it at all. I feel like all the real world side practice has helped me improve these abilities indirectly, they have all added to my brain's ability to notice novel patterns, see things from different perspectives, apply new intuitive strategies, that I might have not noticed because I was tunnel visioning when I was younger.
There's also plenty of things that I have got for life just by having practiced them when I was child. E.g. I think everyone gets bicycling, but there's also handstand, walking on hands, etc, which I learned as a kid for few years, and I can still do it even if I only do it once a year. In my view code is exactly the same, and maybe in a way even more straightforward, it's easier than obscure math since you don't have to memorize any formulas to solve it easily, albeit I think a lot of math is great because you don't have to memorize formulas in the first place you just have to internalize or figure out the logic or the idea behind it, and then you just have it. I think repetition in math is specifically the wrong way to go about it, it's about understanding, not repetition.
Multiplication is elementary school math which doesn't require any thinking and the learned approach is simple. You can't really compare the simple stuff that's taught to kids, like basic multiplication or riding a bike with stuff that requires domain-specific knowledge and experience.
Think more stuff like "find the angle of lines defined by (x-4y-1=0) and (x-y-2=0)", "write the number 2026 in base 7", "solve an equation sin^2(x) - sin(x) = 0".
I plucked these from our country's high school final exam from this year. Back when I was in high school, I did mine in 60 minutes without an error when the time limit is 150 minutes and I intuitively immediately knew how to approach each task since the moment I saw it. Also all needed formulas are supplied, you don't need to remember any of them.
I plucked these because for these I don't have the immediate "know how" now, I still understand the topics, and could solve them with enough time, but it would require some thinking and thus I would be slower at solving them than when I was in high school, even though I'm pretty sure I could still ace it in the 150 minute time limit.
But reality goes beyond high schoool... College-level math, like derivations/integrations, sums, algebraic proofs, is even harder and solving some of them could take me hours when I could do them in minutes when I was in college.
With code it's the same. I could solve simple Python/Pascal/C++ high school level tasks as fast or faster than when I was in high school, even if I didn't write any code for a couple of years. But we also had assembly class in college, and I would struggle at assembly if I had to code it now, 10+ years later, even though I didn't struggle with it back then.
> Think more stuff like "find the angle of lines defined by (x-4y-1=0) and (x-y-2=0)", "write the number 2026 in base 7", "solve an equation sin^2(x) - sin(x) = 0".
> I plucked these from our country's high school final exam from this year. Back when I was in high school, I did mine in 60 minutes without an error when the time limit is 150 minutes and I intuitively immediately knew how to approach each task since the moment I saw it. Also all needed formulas are supplied, you don't need to remember any of them.
It seems like with just a little bit of doing it again, you'd be back at the level you were though. Especially if you can do it with formulas right. You would be slower for only a very short amount of time. All those things are in my view if you understood them at some point in your life, you will understand them to the exact same extent with just a little bit of reminding. I would say with most of those concepts, it would take less than 1 hour to be back at similar level. Like for instance number in another base etc.
Depends on the complexity of the task. That's what I tried to hint at by also mentioning college-level math. For the high-school level tasks yeah, couple of hours and I'd be as fast as I was in high school again. For the number in another base it could be as quick as less than 1 hour as again that's a simpler task than the other two.
For derivations/integrations it'd take more time. Less than what it took me to learn them in the first place, for sure. But still a lot more than 1 hour.
Cause I forgot how to "do them" in the first place, which is what the discussion was about in the first place. I still know the "theory" behind, so I can "figure it out" if needed without needing anyone to "instruct" me, or needing "classes" to learn how to do them. But essentially all the "practice" I had back then is forgotten.
And again the same goes for code and technology knowledge, which is what the discussion was about in the first place.
As a senior developer with 10+ years of experience I've already encountered situations where I needed knowledge I knew I had at some point, but already forgot. In my case as a backend developer working for the same company for 5+ years my favorite example is payments processing. There are tons of special/edge cases - e.g. how a failed recurring payment during a subscription is processed. That's something you set up once, then don't touch for years, and suddenly need to study again if a change is needed. How a subscription goes "past due", what you can do in that case, what your code actually does, how it reverts to correct state once a retried payment follows through, what options you offer a customer if his payment method expired and he wants to switch it, ...
And this is also a good example why "domain knowledge" and "code ownership" is a good thing in larger companies. Because under usual circumstances I don't have to deal with these, cause we have a dedicated person who's maintaining the payment-related code. I only fill in in urgent cases happening when he's on vacation.
And juniors designing stuff like this AI-first without properly thinking about all these cases won't learn all the edge cases this flow can contain. So if something goes wrong, you end up with nobody who has the "maintainer experience" for that code - you don't have the one person who is knowledgeable about that topic - everyone in your company is in the same spot as me - having to research the topics again to understand them enough to be able to debug the incident which happened.
This pretty much. It's very hard to forgot theory, especially if it was hard-learned with lots of practice. But enough time spent away from the doing, and the details starts to blur and the only things is the intuition behind those things and a general sense of how it's done.
But with computer programs, the devils is in those details, so even if you're a senior designing the whole service, you either have someone on staff that's responsible for the implementation gotchas or you have to got familiar with them.
