I know what you're thinking — when the calculator came about, being forced to compute in your head wasn't an advantage. But LLMs are different: a calculator is a strictly improved substitute for mental arithmetic, whereas an LLM is only an approximate solution — and it is far from clear whether LLMs will ever become a perfect solution, given the nuanced challenges around context management, interpreting intent, etc.
This is the strange part for me. I'm one of those people that I assume are really common here on HN - I've been having fun coding on personal projects for a long time, somewhere circa 1978 iirc for me. Where I work we're starting to dip our toes into AI and vibecoding and I'm not a big fan. Even in my boring job the actual coding is the part I like the most. So I've taken a different tack. I've been prompting Claude to teach me how to do things, and that has worked out really well. Some basic info to start with, specific questions as needed, but I'm doing the work. I'm improving my productivity while still learning new things and having fun. Win-win for me.
This is exactly the kind of person that could be excluded by a programming culture that requires extensive use of LLMs.
I'm already reading a ton of LLM generated code by less skilled developers and understanding and reviewing it requires a paranoid attention to detail of the reader that I think you probably lack if these tools to generate large chunks of code seems like a good option to you at all.
Very tangential, but I could swear QBasic included an on-disk documentation system accessible from the editor. Maybe only later versions?
Perhaps my installation didn't include it, or maybe you're confusing it with QuickBASIC, a more feature-complete IDE with a compiler (instead of just an interpreter). I don't exactly remember.
Lots of people use locked down proprietary softwares and even GNU licenses have been criticized for being locked down
There are primitivist critiques of technology in general that show how technological systems require very restrictive global industrial systems
Pre-LLM eras had me hunting all over for poorly documented solutions to common problems, with vast amounts of limitations on what was possible
For one, imagine having to discover StackExchange without Google search. Sure, those were gratis, but I'm not so sure programming was ever as free as the author says.
It was pretty easy back then to find software that would work on those machines on the internet, too. I'm not so sure it would be as easy for young people to learn using yesterday's computers today.
"Even before the extinction level meteor hit Ohio, there were tiny meteors hitting Earth all the time, it wasn't that safe either".
What’s the point?
Writing deploying and delivering software has never been as accessible as it has ever been
Much like the author I learned on my own too and with a lot less help because I didn’t have a parent even guiding me through it
Entire industries and massive companies existed for tools and tooling that is now considered free and table-stakes. Heck, an operating system used to cost money and didn't come with much at all!
I remember talking to people a couple decades older than me and being confused when they talked about having to buy compilers, too.
It doesn't solve the problem of general LLM dependency (at the end of the day we gotta keep our brains sharp), but any LLM-based workflows aren't all of a sudden put at risk if we set up something that depends on it.
Getting the most out of LLM tooling is a real skill that needs practice just like any other
My view is that the author is talking about having a knowledge of career-relevant skills, developed for free.
If you can't develop the skills to be competitive in an interview without using LLMs, then you are forced by societal factors to use the LLMs.
there has always been a moat, with varying levels of depth. do you have electricity? do you have a computer? can you afford internet?
I understand it from people like PG and the like, but real hackers? C'mon people
You think it was always this easy to find high quality docs and packages written by others for free?
Now, if you don't find gcc and neither of vi (and later vim) or emacs usable, well, let's not go there.
And the tools, they just keep getting better. Now I have both clang and gcc, and so many wayy-cool vim plugins to choose from.
I still pay for good hardware, but thanks to Linus and his ilk, I barely need to do that anymore.