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I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to p
by neals 6mo ago
I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. Crazy how fast that goes.
- acedTrex 6mo agoIf this was me you couldn't waterboard this info out of me.
- marliechiller 6mo agoWhy? Is this is because of shame or fear of losing your job?
- jimbokun 6mo agoBecause the info is no longer in their brain.
- acedTrex 6mo agoBecause its incredibly embarrassing to admit you can no longer do very basic programming tasks as a "professional" in that field.
- embedding-shape 6mo agoI think it's a matter of what "very basic programming tasks" actually mean keeps sliding across the years. Surely in the beginning, being able to write Assembly was "very basic programming tasks" but as Algol and Fortran took over, suddenly those instead became the "very basic programming tasks". Repeat this for decades, and "very basic programming tasks" might be creating a cross-platform browser by using LLMs via voice dictation.
- redsocksfan45 6mo ago[dead]
- ryandrake 6mo agoSkill atrophy is intrinsically embarrassing, no matter what those skills are. I am embarrassed to admit that I have forgotten a lot of how to hand-optimize C code with inline assembly, even though few people do that anymore.
- embedding-shape 6mo agoReally? How long you've been a developer? I've been almost exclusively doing "agent coding" for the last year + some months, been a professional developer for a decade or something. Tried just now to write some random JavaScript, C#, Java, Rust and Clojure "manually" and seems my muscle memory works just as well as two years ago. I'm wondering if this is something that hits new developers faster than more experienced ones?
- mathgeek 6mo agoProbably depends on the individual. Senior developer here and I've always offloaded boilerplate and other "easy to google" things to search engines and now AI. Just how my brain and memory work. Anything I haven't used recently isn't worth keeping (in my subconscious mind's opinion anyway).
- ConceptJunkie 6mo agoYeah, having to look up the "basic boilerplate" stuff is not worse for me after starting to use AI than it was beforehand.
- farresito 6mo ago> I'm wondering if this is something that hits new developers faster than more experienced ones? Almost certainly, at least according to Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve.
- intended 6mo agoIt a side effect of using AI. People using AI for tasks (essay writing in the MIT study linked below) showed lower ownership, brain connectivity, and ability to quote their work accurately. > https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 There was a MSFT and Carnegie Mellon study that saw a link between AI use, confidence in ones skills, confidence in AI, and critical thinking. The takeaway for me is that people are getting into “AI take the wheel” scenarios when using GenAI and not thinking about the task. This affects people novices more than experts. If you managed to do critical thinking, and had relegated sufficient code to muscle memory, perhaps you aren’t as impacted.
- dukky 6mo agoI thought this comment was going the opposite way - previously no internet/googling but now you can run a local model and figure things out without the need for internet at all
- wanderingstan 6mo agoMine as well. 2 years ago my mind was blown that I could code in a language I didn’t know (scala) while on a log train ride with no internet (Amtrak) using a local model on a laptop. Couldn’t believe it.
- jimbokun 6mo agoThe staggeringly effective compression of LLMs is still under appreciated, I think. 2 years ago you had downloaded onto your laptop an effective and useful summary of all of the information on the Internet, that could be used to generate computer programs in an arbitrarily selected programming language.
- wanderingstan 6mo agoYes! Continuing on thoughts of LLM compression, I'm now convinced and amazed that economics will dictate that all devices contain a copy of all information on the Internet. I wrote a post about it: Your toaster will know mesopotamian history because it’s more expensive not too. https://wanderingstan.com/2026-03-01/your-toaster-will-know-mesopotamian-history-because-its-more-expensive-not-too https://wanderingstan.com/2026-03-01/your-toaster-will-know-...
- queenkjuul 6mo agoFairly certain the least expensive option will always be a dumb toaster that just plugs into the wall
- jimbokun 6mo agoNot if it requires the toaster company to maintain a different SKU without the LLM chip and sells very few units.
- pablogiuffrida 6mo agoprobably a junior/semi sr developer?
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- himata4113 6mo agoI haven't written complex code for so long I forgot how I used to type && on my keyboard. Wild times.
- jasonlotito 6mo agoOthers have addressed other aspects of this, but I want to address this: > I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. I don't know exactly what you mean by boilerplate stuff, but honestly, that's stuff we should have automated away prior to AI. We should not be writing boilerplate. I'd highly encourage you to take the time to automate this stuff away. Not even with AI, but with scripts you can run to automate boilerplate generation. (Assuming you can't move it to a library/framework).
- bdangubic 6mo agoI read the "boilerplate" in that comment as "basic" meaning "I don't know how to center a div" or "I do not know how to remove duplicates from a collection"
- fendy3002 6mo agoWell both of them are easily retrieved from web search, it's not a problem if you forget one or two. I'll probably need some refreshment if I want to implement bubble sort again.
- bdangubic 6mo agoThe topic refers to being on an airplane without internet....
- TheOtherHobbes 6mo agoDoes anyone know how to centre a div? Last time I looked there were at least seven ways to do it.
- papa0101 6mo agomargin: auto, or flex align-items/justify-content are my go-tos
- queenkjuul 6mo agoFlexbox, mate
- dleslie 6mo agoAll skill degrade with disuse. For example, here in Canada we have observed a literacy and numeracy skills curve that peaks with post-secondary education and declines with retirement.[0] Use it or lose it, as it were. 0: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/241210/dq241210a-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/241210/dq241...
- MattRix 6mo agoThat is one factor, but it’s not the whole thing. The other key element is “cognitive offloading” where your brain stops doing stuff when it thinks it is redundant. This is similar to the photo-taking impairment effect where people will remember an event more poorly if they took photos at the event. Their brain basically subconsciously decides it doesn’t need to remember the event because the camera will remember the event instead.
- randcraw 6mo agoThe more the role of the tool, the less the role of the craftsman.
- TeMPOraL 6mo agoIf the tool is reliable, it's a win. Saved brain power doesn't disappear, it can be applied elsewhere. If the tool is powerful enough to do a better job than our brains would, it's a big win. In fact, we built the entire technological civilization on one such fundamental tool: writing. Or from another perspective: our brains excel at adapting to the environment we find ourselves in. The tools we build, the technology we create, are parts our environment.
- grtteee 6mo agoThis argument has held up in the past but there’s no certainty that during this current period where LLM’s are not perfect (and in many cases far from perfect) - they can ever become perfect that it’s fine for one’s existing human capital to depreciate.
- dwedge 6mo agoWill you do anything differently knowing this? Does the risk of LLMs being unaffordable to you in the near future make you wary about losing the skills?
- olmo23 6mo agoI don't think it would take very long to regain those skills either.
- onemoresoop 6mo agoYes, they do come back faster than learning from scratch. However, what’s possibly worrying is that our brains atrophy some faculties if we decided to skip the learning part altogether.
- joseda-hg 6mo agoOpen Models are currently within reach for most of the kind of writing I do I still decide what and why it generates what it does, I just don't do it manually I'm not super worried, either I still do the last leg of the work, or I go back an abstraction level with my prompts and work there
- dwedge 6mo agoThe person I replied to couldn't code on a plane, so presumably either doesn't use or doesn't like open models
- XCSme 6mo agoI guess writing code is now like creating punch-cards for old computers. Or even more recently, as writing ASM instead of using a higher level language like C. Now we simply write our "code" in a higher language, natural language, and the LLM is the compiler.
- TheRoque 6mo agoI cringe every time I read this "punch card" narrative. We are not at this stage at all. You are comparing deterministic stuff and LLMs which are not deterministic and may or may not give you what you want. In fact I personally barely use autonomous Agents in my brownfield codebase because they generate so much unmaintainable slop.
- bigfishrunning 6mo agoExcept that compiler is a non-deterministic pull of a slot-machine handle. No thanks, I'll keep my programming skills; COBOL programmers command a huge salary in 2026, soon all competent programmers will.
- bilekas 6mo ago> Now we simply write our "code" in a higher language, natural language, and the LLM is the compiler. No we don't and we never should actually, compilers need to be deterministic.
- SkyBelow 6mo agoIt needs to be something stronger than just deterministic. With the right settings, a LLM is deterministic. But even then, small variations in input can cause very unforeseen changes in output, sometimes drastic, sometimes minor. Knowing that I'm likely misusing the vocabulary, I would go with saying that this counts as the output being chaotic so we need compilers to be non-chaotic (and deterministic, I think you might be able to have something that is non-deterministic and non-chaotic). I'm not sure that a non-chaotic LLM could ever exist. (Thinking on it a bit more, there are some esoteric languages that might be chaotic, so this might be more difficult to pin down than I thought.)
- 6mo ago
- fendy3002 6mo agoIn my 7th years of professionally programming node, not even once I remember the express or html boilerplate, neither is the router definition or middleware. Yet I can code normally provided there's internet accessible. It's simply not worth remembering, logic and architecture worth more IMO
- malfist 6mo agoEinstein famously refused to learn people's phone numbers, stating that he could look them up in the phonebook whenever he needed it. I don't think there is that much value in memorizing rarely used, easily looked up information.
- gilleain 6mo agoAgreed, it interests me how much some people emphasise knowing facts - like dates in history or dictionary definitions of words. Facts alone are like pebbles on a beach, far better (IMO) to have a few stones mortared with understanding to make a building of knowledge. A fanciful metaphor but you know ...
- animuchan 6mo agoThis is an entirely false dichotomy though, is it not? One can both know facts and understand logic behind them, it's not like you're creating an RPG character and need to make a choice with limited character points. (Can't say time is the limiting factor either -- we're both in HN comments, valuing our own time at zero.)
- bandrami 6mo agoThis conversation keeps missing me because I don't think I've typed out boilerplate in like 20 years. Were people actually physically typing every character of the software they were writing before a couple of years ago?
- danelski 6mo agoCouple of years ago I was (as a human being, not my career span) 20. Spare for the usual StackOverflow / blog snippets, that was my experience and I suppose most of those just starting out. I think it's very recent to have fresh grads that barely type code themselves.
- sph 6mo agoInteresting. I don’t think my brother has written boilerplate in 20 years either. He’s a chef. I on the other hand am a software engineer, so writing code is part of the job title.
- bandrami 6mo agoRight but, were you really not using snippets and templates before LLMs? Company? Helm? Whatever vi uses that's like company and helm? Haven't IDEs written function calls for you for like decades now?
- sph 6mo agoI very rarely use autocomplete on Emacs, except hippie-expand. I have yasnippet installed but I have never used it. I just checked, it's not even key bound to anything. I work on greenfield projects so I see my fair share of boilerplate, but honestly, it's just a minute part of work that's almost meditative to write a little bit of trivial code (i.e. a function signature) in between sessions of hard thinking. Writing boilerplate is very far down the list of things I seek to optimize. Also I don't use LLM.
- paulryanrogers 6mo agoYes. Until the RSI sets in. Then you learn copy-paste, templating, abstracting and aliases real fast!
- desireco42 6mo agoHonestly, you shouldn't be working on a plane. This thing where people are plugged in all the time is just insane. Yes, you lost some abilities. Install local model so you have someone to talk to while you are on the plane ;)
- I_am_tiberius 6mo agoSoon everyone will run local models for simple stuff like that.
- falcor84 6mo agoMaybe it's my memory issues, but I personally could never remember basic boilerplate. 30 years ago I would spend half of my time in Borland's help menu coupled with grepping through man pages. These days I use LLMs, including ollama when on a plane. I don't feel worse off.
- aworks 6mo agoIt was a long time ago but I attended a session by IBM at an OO conference. The speaker's claim was that the half-life of programming language knowledge was 6 months i.e. if not reinforced, that how fast it goes. I learned the Q array language five years ago and then didn't touch it for six months. I was surprised how little I remembered when I tried to resume.
- rafterydj 6mo agoFor my money, while surely it must have been jarring, that experience would seem to say that on-device LLMs are more important programming tools than package repositories. As another commenter said, the affordability of LLM subscriptions (or, as others are predicting, the lack thereof) is the primary concern, not the technology itself stealing away your skills. I am far from the definitive voice in the does-AI-use-corrupt-your-thinking conversation, and I don't want to be. I don't want LLMs to replace my thinking as much as the next person, but I also don't want to shun anything useful that can be gained from these tools. All that said, I do feel that perhaps "dumber" LLMs that work on-device first will allow us to get further and be better, more reliable tools overall.
- nprateem 6mo agoI haven't been able to code without reading a sample of code for years before AI. Maybe it's just what happens when you're polyglot but I remember thinking even stupid things like how to declare a class in whatever lang I had to see. But once I saw a sample of code I'd get back into it. Then there's stuff I never committed to memory, like the nonsensical dance of reading from a file in go, or whatever. So I don't think this is all AI tbh.
- sph 6mo agoGood news for us Luddites. Keep it up.
- simianwords 6mo agoI keep seeing this repeated but isn’t it a good thing you don’t remember boilerplate? This is not information that deserves to be memorised. The fact that this is being called out is strange.
- TacticalCoder 6mo ago> But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I do use AI daily to help me enhance code but then... I also very regularly turn off, physically, the link between a sub-LAN at home and the Internet and I still can work. It's incredibly relaxing to work on code without being connected 24/7. Other machines (like kid's Nintendo switch) can still access the Internet: but my machines for developing are cut off. And as I've got a little infra at home (Proxmox / VMs), I have quite a few services without needing to be connected to the entire world: for example I've got a pastebin, a Git server, a backuping procedure, all 100% functional without needing to be connected to the net (well 99% for the backuping procedure as the encrypted backup files won't be synch'ed with remote servers until the connection is operational). Sure it's not a "laptop on a plane", but it's also not "24/7 dependent on Sam Altman or Anthropic". I'll probably enhance my setup at some point with a local Gemma model too. And all this is not mutually exclusive with my Anthropic subscription: at the flick of a switch (which is right in front of me), my sub-LAN can access the Internet again.
- m3kw9 6mo agoboiler plate stuff will be like assembly code in the past, you won't need to use it.
- asxndu 6mo agoI wrote about this and the response from most friends was mostly dismissive.[0] The early this year, in my country (Uganda) the entire internet was shutdown during elections for close to 1 week. A lot of devs in the country couldn't do anything during that period. So much, some actually claimed the moved to nearby Nairobi Kenya. https://asindu.xyz/a-single-reason-to-not-vibe-code/ https://asindu.xyz/a-single-reason-to-not-vibe-code/
- xtracto 6mo agoI'm old enough to have programmed C in IBM/PC with the book Turbo C/C++ [1] at my desk side as reference, around 1993. I remember at that time, my "mentor" suggested to memorize all the "keywords" from C (which were few). But given my bad memory I had to constantly look at the book. Aaah how times have changed. [1] https://openlibrary.org/books/OL1601323M/Turbo_C_C https://openlibrary.org/books/OL1601323M/Turbo_C_C
- luxcem 6mo agoI thought the same but I tried to create a small Django project with APIs, small React frontend from scratch, no LLM, no autocomplete, just a text editor. I was surprised it was all still there after a couple of hours. Not sure it's a skill that useful today, it feels like remembering your multiplication table.
- negura 6mo agoanecdata that is an apropos to the actual submission is somehow at the top of the thread with 100 (now +1) replies