I was worried about skill atrophy. I recently started a new job, and from day 1 I've been using Claude. 90+% of the code I've written has been with Claude. One of the earlier tickets I was given was to update the documentation for one of our pipelines. I used Claude entirely, starting with having it generate a very long and thorough document, then opening up new contexts and getting it to fact check until it stopped finding issues, and then having it cut out anything that was granular/one query away. And then I read what it had produced.

It was an experiment to see if I could enter a mature codebase I had zero knowledge of, look at it entirely through an AI, and come to understand it.

And it worked! Even though I've only worked on the codebase through Claude, whenever I pick up a ticket nowadays I know what file I'll be editing and how it relates to the rest of the code. If anything, I have a significantly better understanding of the codebase than I would without AI at this point in my onboarding.

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estetlinus 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, +1. I will never be working on unsolved problems anyhow. Skill atrophy is not happening if you stay curious and responsible.

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stringfood 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I have never learned so quickly in my entire life than to post a forum thread in its entirety into a extended think LLM and then be allowed to ask free form questions for 2 hours straight if I want to. Having my questions answered NOW is so important for me to learn. Back in the day by the time I found the answer online I forgot the question

	▲	lobf 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Same. I work in the film industry, but I’ve always been interested in computers and have enjoyed tinkering with them since I was about 5. However, coding has always been this insurmountably complicated thing- every time I make an effort to learn, I’m confronted with concepts that are difficult for me to understand and process. I’ve been 90% vibe coding for a year or so now, and I’ve learned so much about networking just from spinning up a bunch of docker containers and helping GPT or Claude fix niggling issues. I essentially have an expert (well, maybe not an expert but an entity far more capable than I am on my own) who’s shoulder I can look over and ask as many questions I want to, and who will explain every step of the process to me if I want. I’m finally able to create things on my computer that I’ve been dreaming about for years.

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idopmstuff 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Some people talk like skill atrophy is inevitable when you use LLMs, which strikes me as pretty absurd given that you are talking about a tool that will answer an infinite number of questions with infinite patience.

I usually learn way more by having Claude do a task and then quizzing it about what it did than by figuring out how to do it myself. When I have to figure out how to do the thing, it takes much more time, so when I'm done I have to move on immediately. When Claude does the task in ten minutes I now have several hours I can dedicate entirely to understanding.

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onemoresoop 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You lose some, you win some. The win could be short-term much higher, however imagine that the new tool suddenly gets ragged pulled from under your feet. What do you do then? Do you still know how to handle it the old way or do you run into skill atrophy issues? I’m using Claude/Codex as well, but I’m a little worried that the environment we work in will become a lot more bumpy and shifty.

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visarga 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> the new tool suddenly gets ragged pulled from under your feet

If that happened at this point, it would be after societal collapse.

	▲	onemoresoop 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don’t even wanna think about that scenario, maybe he gets averted somehow.

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hdjrudni an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The "infinite patience" thing I find particularly interesting.

Every now and then I pause before I ask an LLM to undo something it just did or answer something I know it answered already, somewhere. And then I remember oh yeah, it's an LLM, it's not going to get upset.

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dlopes7 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Asking infinite questions about something does not make you good at “doing” that thing, you get pretty good at asking questions

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techpression an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Understanding is not learning. Zero effort gives zero rewards, I ask Claude plenty of things, I get answers but not learnings.

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bdangubic 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I used to speak Russian like I was born in Russia. I stopped talking Russian … every day I am curious ans responsible but I can hardly say 10 words in Russian today. if you don’t use it (not just be curious and responsible) you will lose it - period.

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thih9 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Programming language is not just syntax, keywords and standard libraries, but also: processes, best practices and design principles. The latter group I guess is more difficult to learn and harder to forget.

	▲	bdangubic an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I respectfully completely disagree. not only will you just as easily lose thr processed, best practices and design principles but they will be changing over time (what was best practice when I got my first gig in 1997 is not a best practice today (even just 4-5 years ago not to go all the back to the 90’s)). all that is super easy to both forget and lose unless you live it daily

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root_axis 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have also found LLMs are a great tool for understanding a new code base, but it's not clear to me what your comment has to do with skill atrophy.

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Ifkaluva an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What do you mean “cut out anything that was granular/one query away”? This was a very cool workflow to hear about—I will be applying it myself

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SpicyLemonZest 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Are you sure you would know if it didn't work? I use Claude extensively myself, so I'm not saying this from a "hater" angle, but I had 2 people last week who believe themselves to be in your shoes send me pull requests which made absolutely no sense in the context of the codebase.

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therealdrag0 3 hours ago | parent [-]

That’s always been the case, AI or not.

	▲	Jweb_Guru an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		No, it hasn't. I did not have a problem before AI with people sending in gigantic pull requests that made absolutely no sense, and justifying them with generated responses that they clearly did not understand. This is not a thing that used to happen. That's not to say people wouldn't have done it if it were possible, but there was a barrier to submitting a pull request that no longer exists.
	▲	viccis 28 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		In my experience, the people sending me garbage PRs with Claude are the same ones who wrote garbage code beforehand. Now there's just 10x more of it.
	▲	windexh8er 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It just happens to be a lot worse now. Confidence through ignorance has come into the spotlight with the commoditization of LLMs.

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viccis 14 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's good that it's working for you but I'm not sure what this has to do with skill atrophy. It sounds like you never had this skill (in this case, working with that particular system) to begin with.

>I have a significantly better understanding of the codebase than I would without AI at this point in my onboarding

One of the pitfalls of using AI to learn is the same as I'd see students doing pre-AI with tutoring services. They'd have tutors explain the homework to do them and even work through the problems with them. Thing is, any time you see a problem or concept solved, your brain is tricked into thinking you understand the topic enough to do it yourself. It's why people think their job interview questions are much easier than they really are; things just seem obvious when you've thought about the solution. Anyone who's read a tutorial, felt like they understood it well, and then struggled for a while to actually start using the tool to make something new knows the feeling very well. That Todo List app in the tutorial seemed so simple, but the author was making a bunch of decisions constantly that you didn't have to think about as you read it.

So I guess my question would be: If you were on a plane flight with no wifi, and you wanted to do some dev work locally on your laptop, how comfortable would you be vs if you had done all that work yourself rather than via Claude?

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throwaway613746 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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