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Show HN: Fata – Spaced repetition to fight skill rot from AI coding

fata.dev

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Show HN: Fata – Spaced repetition to fight skill rot from AI coding

#1

Post by djoume »

Hi HN, I'm Djoumé. I've been a developer for over 20 years, and like a lot of you I've been coding almost exclusively through an agent in the past few months.

It's been amazing to vibe code prototypes in any stack, but when it comes to building something reliable/scalable, I couldn't effectively guide the agent unless I knew the technology. And the scariest part is that I'm seeing a lot of my technical skills decreasing due to AI coding.

Reflecting on my journey, I also worry about how the new "AI native" generation of software developer is going to acquire technical depth.

So I built fata.dev: short daily spaced-repetition sessions for programming skills (Rust, CSS, React, Python, TypeScript, Architecture).

You can try it in the browser with no signup: https://fata.app/courses

It's an offline-first mobile app built with Capacitor, RxDB and Firebase. The first courses were painfully written by hand, but most content is now AI-generated. It takes about 3000 LLM calls to generate a course, and every code samples goes through compilation, linting, unit testing, AI and a final manual review.

Would very much appreciate any feedback on the product & website, what works and what could be better. Thanks!

Show HN: Fata – Spaced repetition to fight skill rot from AI coding
fata.dev

Re: Show HN: Fata – Spaced repetition to fight skill rot from AI coding

#3

Post by bluefirebrand »

The copy on your website is kind of confusing imo

> fata builds the full-stack fundamentals to lead a coding agent through frontend, backend, and the technical design that holds up in production.

"Fata builds" sounds like it does the work, not like it trains you how to do the work. With how many "AI does the work for you" promises out there, it's confusing terminology

Anyways best of luck I suppose. I would rather run a drill press through my hand than use AI agents to write code for me, so I'm not your target audience

Re: Show HN: Fata – Spaced repetition to fight skill rot from AI coding

#5

Post by djoume »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #3

The copy on your website is kind of confusing imo > fata builds the full-stack fundamentals to lead a coding agent through frontend, backend, and the technical design that holds up in production. "Fata builds" sounds like it does the work, not like it trains you how to do the work. With how many "AI does the work for you" promises out there, it's confusing terminology Anyways best of luck I suppose. I would rather ru…

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated, will fix the copy.

Re: Show HN: Fata – Spaced repetition to fight skill rot from AI coding

#7

Post by jubilanti »

fragmede wrote: post #4

How's your assembler? Run ar by hand lately?

If you're trying to imply that knowing fundamentals of programming is now as obsolete as knowing fundamentals of assembler: this is a dumb thought-terminating cliche that adds nothing to the discussion and I'm sick of seeing it constantly in these threads.

Re: Show HN: Fata – Spaced repetition to fight skill rot from AI coding

#8

Post by dsffdfsdds »

jubilanti wrote: post #7
fragmede wrote: post #4

How's your assembler? Run ar by hand lately?

If you're trying to imply that knowing fundamentals of programming is now as obsolete as knowing fundamentals of assembler: this is a dumb thought-terminating cliche that adds nothing to the discussion and I'm sick of seeing it constantly in these threads.

React, python and Rust are not the "fundamentals of programming". Those are highly specific ephemeral instantiations of the more general knowledge you seem to be alluding to. They are the new COBOLs. We are not there yet, but the writing is on the wall pretty clearly if you ask me. Regular programming languages will indeed be as useful as knowing assembler in a couple of years, which is to say, pretty useful, but for many not necessary (anymore).

The main point is that these things are implementation details like assembler. Very interesting in and of themselves especially if you are on the spectrum and occassionally need to be looked at, but the knowledge is instrumental at best and useless baggage at worst. Validation is what matters. Code is useless cruft. If you can replace it all with "348348-23439 CALL(X(DDD)D)" somehow, that's great, as long as it works. I don't know why people get sentimental about wrangling syntax. We're in automation, we've been doing it to other people. We're now doing it to ourselves.

You see this point often because it is blatantly obvious for anyone that didn't build their identity around proficient wrangling of specific families of syntax.

I suspect the era of LLMs coding in "our languages" is a temporary abberation anyway. It's not necessary at all and in fact actively hampering their effectiveness. I'd say enjoy it while it lasts.

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