> The foundational knowledge that used to come from struggling through problems is just… missing. This is the key. Some people assume that the goal of programm

> The foundational knowledge that used to come from struggling through problems is just… missing. This is the key. Some people assume that the goal of programming is to produce code. Productive programmers understand that the goal is to produce a theory, a shared understanding with a common domain language, that is incidentally encapsulated in working software systems. Code is such a small part of programming. But if you're a lazy newb who thinks code == programming, LLMs might look like magic pixie dust. But that dust turns out to be a harmful pollutant which accumulates quickly. There is absolutely no honor in layering shit on top of systems you don't understand. What I see more and more is a completely defeatist attitude - "we can never understand these systems. It's too complex and it will always be broken". That's just empirically false and quite frankly a bit sad that these people have never seen or experienced a working software system. There do exist systems that were engineered to fit a purpose, and just work for that purpose indefinitely. It is possible. We can have nice things, but not if we take the defeatist attitude and outsource our thinking.