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

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

#41

Post by danielmarkbruce »

RealityVoid wrote: post #36
dvt wrote: post #20

Engineering has never been, nor will it ever be, about "repetition" or "memorization." This is a relatively new fable invented by those that have participated in ritualistic interview hazing. Imo, there are, broadly speaking, two types of engineers: computer scientists, and programmers. Computer scientists do science. The end result is a new algorithm or theorem, and they work with lots of math, proof systems, formal…

> Engineering has never been, nor will it ever be, about "repetition" or "memorization." Having memory of how to do things and techniques and tools and patterns is absolutely important for solving problems. The very reason experienced engineers are just better at many classes of problems. > This cleverness can't be augmented by AI, and it can't be rotted by AI: it's something that's innate to people I argue "cleverne…

> Having memory of how to do things and techniques and tools and patterns is absolutely important for solving problems. The very reason experienced engineers are just better at many classes of problems.

At least in my experience, the best engineers have a vast catalog of problems and solutions, algorithms, architecture patters, data structures etc and almost nothing comes from scratch. The worst engineers do everything from scratch without much/any understanding that the problem they are facing (or a variation of it) has been solved before in 6 different ways with varying tradeoffs.

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

#42

Post by danielmarkbruce »

apsurd wrote: post #39
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineering creativity does not come from a blank slate.... people create by combining primitives like APIs, algorithms, patterns, debugging techniques, product constraints, performance constraints, user needs, and blah blah blah. You can argue that a particular primitive is bad or overemphasized but the ida that real engineering has nothing to do with repetition, memory etc is wrong.

Well, the inventory of primitives has to be earned. Else they can't actually be composed. Composition requires tacit knowledge. There's a learning pyramid thing that describes it. Just asked chatGPT to jog my memory (heh, heh) Remember → Understand → Apply → Analyze → Evaluate → Create citation: see "Bloom's Taxonomy" Discussions on learning typically bring up the need for rote learning, repetition and vocabulary bui…

> It's necessary but in no way sufficient.

Sure, agreed.

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

#43

Post by jwpapi »

djoume wrote: post #32
jwpapi wrote: post #31

Are you guys for real? A mobile app? Who in the world who’s interested in this would do it on a mobile app.

People often do their 10 minutes of daily fata.dev during their commute where mobile/offline access is ideal. The UX is optimized for mobile but you can also do it on your computer, it's a progressive web app that is installable as a desktop app: https://fata.app

I don’t think HN is the right place to post this and also I don’t think the title/slogin as fitting. This might be helpful to beginners, but nobody who’s scared of skill rot, will use this on a mobile app.

Honestly I think there is no benefit in any mobile coding app at all. It makes coding seem way more tedious than it is. I would rather recommend a book, laptop or youtube video than to do coding tasks on a phone keyboard.

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

#44

Post by apsurd »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #41
RealityVoid wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Engineering has never been, nor will it ever be, about "repetition" or "memorization." Having memory of how to do things and techniques and tools and patterns is absolutely important for solving problems. The very reason experienced engineers are just better at many classes of problems. > This cleverness can't be augmented by AI, and it can't be rotted by AI: it's something that's innate to people I argue "cleverne…

> Having memory of how to do things and techniques and tools and patterns is absolutely important for solving problems. The very reason experienced engineers are just better at many classes of problems. At least in my experience, the best engineers have a vast catalog of problems and solutions, algorithms, architecture patters, data structures etc and almost nothing comes from scratch. The worst engineers do everythi…

“Master all prior art before naively trying to do anything on your own” - also, very much does way more harm than good in a learning context. (it narrows the top of the funnel for no good reason)

The gripe seems to be the negative effect on the team, business/project outcome etc, sure work doesn’t pay you to write your own compiler.

But again, its such a disservice to learning to dictate a shape, largely academic, largely top down (vs bottoms up failing & flailing).

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

#46

Post by danielmarkbruce »

apsurd wrote: post #44
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having memory of how to do things and techniques and tools and patterns is absolutely important for solving problems. The very reason experienced engineers are just better at many classes of problems. At least in my experience, the best engineers have a vast catalog of problems and solutions, algorithms, architecture patters, data structures etc and almost nothing comes from scratch. The worst engineers do everythi…

“Master all prior art before naively trying to do anything on your own” - also, very much does way more harm than good in a learning context. (it narrows the top of the funnel for no good reason) The gripe seems to be the negative effect on the team, business/project outcome etc, sure work doesn’t pay you to write your own compiler. But again, its such a disservice to learning to dictate a shape, largely academic, la…

No one said anything about learning everything before doing anything, and nobody suggested they were told to do it or how they did it.

And, bad engineers can become good ones. All the good ones were terrible at some point....

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

#47

Post by apsurd »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #46
apsurd wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Master all prior art before naively trying to do anything on your own” - also, very much does way more harm than good in a learning context. (it narrows the top of the funnel for no good reason) The gripe seems to be the negative effect on the team, business/project outcome etc, sure work doesn’t pay you to write your own compiler. But again, its such a disservice to learning to dictate a shape, largely academic, la…

No one said anything about learning everything before doing anything, and nobody suggested they were told to do it or how they did it. And, bad engineers can become good ones. All the good ones were terrible at some point....

Yes, the main issue I had was regarding how anyone can get good without first being bad. Your comment highlighted a very particular worst engineer persona, as if there was an obvious way they could have avoided it preemptively.

Since we’re talking about learning in particular, my callout is it’s in no way helpful to shame people that aren’t good at something. It’s counterproductive.

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

#50

Post by stbtrax »

AmblingAvocado wrote: post #16

Coming at this as someone who has stepped away from coding more than once for multiple-year long stints due to various career choices - I think the concern of "skill rot" is overblown. I stopped writing C++ professionally in the early 2010's. I came back to it in the early 2020's and it was extremely easy to pick up. Less like riding a bike, more like driving a car. The car got better over the last 10 years, but it s…

do you have any tips or strategies on picking up c++ after a long break?
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