It’s like skiing or biking, it comes back quickly.
AskHN:How do you handle skill atrophy from using coding agents?
11–20 of 52 posts
Re: AskHN:How do you handle skill atrophy from using coding agents?
#12I honestly don't feel there is much atrophy or this is an issue at all As if for example someone's skill lessened if they switched from assembly to a higher level programming language over time (like, does it matter?) If you for some reason had to go back and program more manually, then you could do so as the need arises Otherwise, LLMs appear to be here to stay and you don't actually need those skills that are even…
I waltzed into a tech screen thinking I could handcode python after having LLM be primary at it for over a year. Yeah, there's atrophy -- I humiliated myself and took the lesson. :)
There is a meta-argument about whether companies should interview about hand-coding anymore, but... the skills do atrophy. I've been mixing hand-coding into my routines ever since to try to keep those skills lukewarm. I'm not yet sure if I am wasting my time doing so or not.
$0.02
Re: AskHN:How do you handle skill atrophy from using coding agents?
#13It’s like skiing or biking, it comes back quickly.
One hopes
Re: AskHN:How do you handle skill atrophy from using coding agents?
#14For every skill that may atrophy, I feel like I am developing experience in 10 new ones. I am not focused on using AI to perform my existing job function though, I am developing new capabilities.
Agree. e.g. I'm happy to be a better writer at the cost of being a worse speller, etc.
Re: AskHN:How do you handle skill atrophy from using coding agents?
#15Simple. I use my brain and write code without coding agents.
Re: AskHN:How do you handle skill atrophy from using coding agents?
#16For every skill that may atrophy, I feel like I am developing experience in 10 new ones. I am not focused on using AI to perform my existing job function though, I am developing new capabilities.
prompting is not a skill. prompt engineering, harness engineering watever are copes.
Re: AskHN:How do you handle skill atrophy from using coding agents?
#17I am curious how the workflow of people, who do not write code at all, looks like, or what products do they build. In my experience LLMs are an excavator, but you still have to tweak the fine details with a shovel.
Re: AskHN:How do you handle skill atrophy from using coding agents?
#18[flagged]
Re: AskHN:How do you handle skill atrophy from using coding agents?
#19Simple. I use my brain and write code without coding agents.
Tough to do this when the rest of the company is using LLMs to generate 3x the number of apps and then your performance goes down because you're not delivering as quickly as others
Re: AskHN:How do you handle skill atrophy from using coding agents?
#20I am curious how the workflow of people, who do not write code at all, looks like, or what products do they build. In my experience LLMs are an excavator, but you still have to tweak the fine details with a shovel.
I am in the infosec space and do a lot of reading, summarizing of code and a vuln PoC here and there in my day job. Over a busy month I may put out 400-500 LoC.
In my personal life, I am making tools to support hobbies. I typically tackle architecture and design myself and sanity check with an LLM, then Codex does all the programming work.
I'm more interested in making sure the apps I make have the content I want and functionally meets my needs than actually writing the code myself. Making fine detail tweaks are not something I need to do past review and pointing them out to to the LLM.