Comment by techpression

It’s not one single skill being lost, it’s about many and how they interact.

I just did a big refactor with opus, it went ok, some bugs. The normal stuff. One of the bugs was in a part of the code no longer needed, which Opus had just filled with comments more or less. Asking it fix the bug worked, but then I really looked at the code and realized just that, this is pointless now.

I’ve only been coding for 20+ years so I might be more susceptible than the author, but I’m quite terrified about losing skills in writing code, but also designing good structure, coherency and system overview. These are the things people claim you need more of with LLMs, but is what you outsource the most, even if you think you are describing it in detail.

We are all collectively growing the skill of complacency and laziness though, and those are not great ”skills” to have. And I’m just as guilty as anyone.