Comment by mystified5016
4 days ago
No one doubts the power or utility of regexes or ffmpeg, but they are both complicated beasts that really take a lot of skill.
They're both tools where if they're part of your daily workflow you'll get immense value out of learning them thoroughly. If instead you need a regex once or twice a week, the benefit is not greater than the cost of learning to do it myself. I have a hundred other equally complicated things to learn and remember, half the job of the computer is to know things I can't put in my brain. If it can do the regex for me, I suddenly get 70% of the value at no cost.
Regex is not a tool I need often enough to justify the hours and brain space. But it is still an indespensible tool. So when I need a regex, I either ask a human wizard I know, or now I ask my computer directly.
It's self-reinforcing though. If you invest the time to learn, then you may find yourself (i a beafutiful house :)) using it a lot more than two times a week.
I think this way of thinking is an uphill battle.
My kid uses wifi, google classroom tools, youtube, games,... I can tell him if only you knew command.com, ipconfig, doom.wad formats, lateg,... you could be so much more proficient. I already know this will never happen, just like I never learned x86 assembly.
The same goes for tools like LLMs, once you are used to them, your knowledge shifts.
I learned a bit of assembly and it was a god send to understand linkers and how FFI works. Also make it easier to have a good model on using a debugger. Not that useful on a tactical level, but really great when faced with some errors in your compiled programs.