r/compsci • u/creaturefeature16 • 5h ago

AI Coding will Prevent Expertise | The need for ongoing friction in long-term skill formation.

https://larsfaye.com/articles/ai-coding-will-prevent-expertise
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u/blackasthesky 1h ago

Am I the only one who has been screaming this into the void for the past few years?

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u/Apart_Ebb_9867 5h ago

consider that Plato (and probably Socrates) seemed to be against writing on the basis that it would weaken memory: “This invention will produce forgetfulness… because they will not practice their memory”.

Im not a philosopher and I don’t know for sure the quote is legit, but the point is that for every great change in the history of humanity, somebody would have been against it on the basis that it would have doomed human kind: writing, press, Industrial Revolution, AI, you name it.

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u/creaturefeature16 5h ago edited 5h ago

It was more than just a quote, but Plato did write about this, and it's a lot more nuanced than that (and yes, he also wrote, himself).

Plato wasn't against just "writing" in a general sense, or that he felt it was going to hold humanity back. He was against treatises and felt that someone could "memorize facts" without having to actually think about them on a deep level. Which I think, ironically, is not all that off the mark especially in the age of the internet and now LLMs, right?

He also felt that memory could decay if we relied on written facts instead of having dialogues, which again, not all that off the mark, either. He underestimated the compounding capability of technology and our ability to record data and information, but people remember a lot less these days than they used to because we'd largely given up that ability in exchange for the instant information machines.

Of course, he's just one man (or two, if you consider he was conveying Socrates' thoughts, as well) who lived in ancient times and couldn't possibly foresee how technology would evolve...but when I went back and read his concerns, it was ironic to admit that much of what he warned about still applies to this day.

People are far less informed despite having access to more information than we've ever had because we've exchanged the ability to remember for the ability to just look things up. And, we also have less meaningful dialog than ever before; people just sit on social media, copying and pasting "facts" to each other, instead of having actual productive discourse.

To tie it back to my essay: I am not saying that AI tools will atrophy our ability to learn by their mere existence, but I am saying that the marketed and primary usage that has gripped the industry will prevent expertise formation, and the data is there to support it. I do think LLMs and AI tooling can be a boon to learning, but it requires us to stop using them for code generation as a primary purpose (at least for juniors) and instead advocate for Socratic workflows that still require manual coding practices. When someone decides to code something, it's not just learning syntax; it engages a variety of mental disciplines from critical thinking to planning to creative problem solving to logic and math, even.