@Simon, I love this. And one day, in the not too distant future, a few old wizened graybeards, like you and I and the other folks on this site who have been writing code from scratch for 20 years, will be the magicians who walk the earth among mere mortals who only learned to code with the assistance of ChatGPT. We will be the ones with the preattentive syntax parsing in our brains that let us simply see basic syntax…
People are still actively acquiring the knowledge to do things the old fashioned way in those areas, a hundred or even thousands (for writing) of years later. But typically they only do it if they need to or find it interesting.
It’s hard for me to think of any technological advance (outside entertainment) that actually caused a mean regression in peoples’ effectiveness, or for people as a whole to completely stop acquiring the skills of doing something the old way to deleterious effects. Like, has there been any invention that was so easy to use that people got worse at the task the tool was invented for? In aggregate it may happen if the tool greatly reduces barriers (like training, experience, or study) to entry, but I kind of doubt it happens for specialists.
Note by effectiveness I mean the general task, not the specific skill that may have become obsolete. I’m not effective at all with a slide rule but I have a Python shell, the internet, and hardware capable of floating point operations.