Ok, I’m NOT an immediate fan of “vibe coding” and overusing LLMs in programming. I have a healthy amount of skepticism about the use of these tools, mostly related to the maintainability of the code, security, privacy, and a dozen other more factors.
But some arguments I’ve seen from developers about not using the tools because it means they “will lose their coding skills” its just bonkers. Especially in a professional context.
Imagine you go to a carpenter, and they say “this will take 2x the time because I don’t use power tools, they make me feel like I’m losing my competence in manual skills”. It’s your job to deliver software using the most efficient and accurate methods possible.
Sure, it is essential that you keep your skills sharp, but being purposfully less effective in your job to keep them sharp is a red flag. And in an industry made of abstractions to increase productivity (we’re no longer coding in Assembly last time I checked), this makes even less sense.
/rant
I’m in two minds on this (as I’ve hinted before). The carpenter analogy doesn’t really hold, because the underlying skill of carpentry is agnostic to whether or not you use power tools: it’s about understanding the material properties of woods, the shapes of joins, the ways structures are strong and where they are weak, the mathematics and geometry that make design possible… none of which are taken over by power tools.
25+ years ago I wrote most of my Perl/PHP code without an Internet connection. When you wanted to deploy you’d “dial up”, FTP some files around, then check it had worked. In that environment, I memorised a lot more. Take PHP’s date formatting strings, for example: I used to have them down by heart! And even when I didn’t, I knew approximately the right spot to flip the right book open to that I’d be able to look it up quickly.
“Always-on” broadband Internet gradually stole that skill from me. It’s so easy for me to just go to the right page on php.net and have the answer I need right in front of me! Nowadays, I depend on that Internet connection (I don’t even have the book any more!).
A power tool targets a carpenter’s production speed, not their knowledge-recovery speed.
Will I experience the same thing from my LLM usage, someday?
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