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Tell HN: AI tools are making me lose interest in CS fundamentals

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Re: Tell HN: AI tools are making me lose interest in CS fundamentals

#41

Post by jorl17 »

jmward01 wrote: post #34

There are two aspects to this. The desire to learn and the utility of learning. These are two very different things. Arguably the best programmers I have known have been explorers and hopped around a lot. Their primary skills have been flexibility and curiosity. The point here was their curiosity, not what they were curious about. Curiosity enabled them to attack new problems quickly and find solutions when others co…

Exactly this. Couldn't have said it better.

Do you feel yourself losing interest, curiosity, "spark"? If so, then maybe worrying is right.

If you're just (hyper?)focused on something else, then, congrats! Our amazing new tools are letting us focus on even more things -- I, for one, am loving it.

Re: Tell HN: AI tools are making me lose interest in CS fundamentals

#42

Post by skybrian »

I think it's important to stay curious and keep learning, but there's a lot to be curious about and all sorts of different skills you could work on improving. Going deep on algorithms or distributed systems are two possible directions, but there are others.

Re: Tell HN: AI tools are making me lose interest in CS fundamentals

#43

Post by wcfrobert »

To borrow a concept from Simon Willison: you need to "hoard things you know how to do”. You need to know what is possible; you need to be able to articulate what you want. AI is a fast car, but it’s empty and still needs a driver. As long as humans are still in the loop, the quality of the driver matters.

Re: Tell HN: AI tools are making me lose interest in CS fundamentals

#45

Post by takwatanabe »

Knowing fundamentals gives you deeper intuition about the technology, at every layer. When compilers appeared, you no longer needed to understand assembly and registers. But knowing how assembly and registers actually work makes you better at C. When Python came along, low-level languages felt unnecessary. But understanding C's memory management is what lets you understand Python's limitations. Now LLMs write the implementation. LLMs abstract away the code. But knowing how algorithms work, even in a high-level language like Python, is exactly how you catch LLM mistakes and inefficiencies.

Knowledge builds on knowledge. We learn basic math before advanced math for a reason. The pyramid keeps accumulating from what came before. Understanding the fundamentals still matters, I think.

Re: Tell HN: AI tools are making me lose interest in CS fundamentals

#46

Post by linepupdesign »

remarkEon wrote: post #26

I was wondering about this. I do not write software to pay the mortgage, I just write the occasional python script, some SQL stuff to update various dashboards, R in my spare time when I'm getting ready for looking at baseball stats or something. AI has had pretty much the opposite effect for me. Watching it write something has made me ask questions, get answers, dig into more details about things I never had the tim…

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Re: Tell HN: AI tools are making me lose interest in CS fundamentals

#47

Post by oefrha »

Fundamentals should have even higher weight in learning budgets now, because AI can’t reliably reason complex architectural problems. It’s the surface level APIs you don’t have to learn/memorize.

Maybe you mean “AI tools are making me lose interest in learning anything”, which is… a common reaction, I suppose.

Re: Tell HN: AI tools are making me lose interest in CS fundamentals

#48

Post by salt4034 »

takwatanabe wrote: post #45

Knowing fundamentals gives you deeper intuition about the technology, at every layer. When compilers appeared, you no longer needed to understand assembly and registers. But knowing how assembly and registers actually work makes you better at C. When Python came along, low-level languages felt unnecessary. But understanding C's memory management is what lets you understand Python's limitations. Now LLMs write the imp…

The author of Claude Code himself mentioned this in a recent interview. If I recall correctly, he mentioned that the best programmers he knows have an understanding of the "layer below the layer", which I think it's a good way of putting it. You're a better C programmer if you understand assembly, and you're a better "vibe coder" if you can actually understand the LLM generated code.

Re: Tell HN: AI tools are making me lose interest in CS fundamentals

#49

Post by dmitrygr »

> For those who have been in the industry longer, why do you think it’s still important to stay strong in CS fundamentals?

Dictionaries have made me feel like studying languages is pointless. People, why do you think it’s still important to stay strong in languages when dictionaries exist?

Re: Tell HN: AI tools are making me lose interest in CS fundamentals

#50

Post by bluequbit »

oefrha wrote: post #47

Fundamentals should have even higher weight in learning budgets now, because AI can’t reliably reason complex architectural problems. It’s the surface level APIs you don’t have to learn/memorize. Maybe you mean “AI tools are making me lose interest in learning anything”, which is… a common reaction, I suppose.

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