[HN Gopher] How I learned everything I know about programming
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How I learned everything I know about programming
Author : speckx
Score : 19 points
Date : 2026-01-15 19:54 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (agentultra.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (agentultra.com)
| macintux wrote:
| "How" I learned everything...
| spogbiper wrote:
| I'd like to think that we all learned everything we know about
| programming
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| The title makes more sense when you click on the link and read
| the actual first word in the title.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Leading word 'How' is automatically removed by HN. In this
| case that was unhelpful ... like many thoughtless algorithmic
| actions.
| grumpopotamus wrote:
| That's pretty obnoxious.
| fleahunter wrote:
| The hidden assumption here is that "learning programming" means
| replicating the author's path: deep curiosity, lots of time,
| comfort asking humans, decent reading stamina. For people who
| already have those traits, yeah, you absolutely don't _need_
| LLMs. But that's a bit like a strong reader in 1995 saying "you
| don't need Google to learn anything, the library is enough" -
| technically true, but it misses what changes when friction drops.
|
| What LLMs do is collapse the activation energy. They don't
| replace the hard work, they make it more likely you'll start and
| keep going long enough for the hard work to kick in. The first 20
| confusing hours are where most people bounce: you can't even
| _formulate_ a useful question for a human, you don't know the
| right terms, and you feel dumb. A tool that will patiently
| respond to "uhh, why is this red squiggly under my thing" at
| 1am, 200 times in a row, is not a shortcut to mastery, it's
| scaffolding to reach the point where genuine learning is even
| possible.
|
| The "you won't retain it if an LLM explains it" argument is about
| how people use the tool, not what the tool is. You also don't
| retain it if you copy-paste Stack Overflow, or skim blog posts
| until something compiles. People have been doing that long before
| GPT. The deep understanding still comes from struggle, debugging,
| building mental models. An LLM can either be a summarization
| crutch or a Socratic tutor that keeps pushing you one step past
| where you are, depending on how you interact with it.
|
| And "just talk to people" is good advice if you're already inside
| the social graph of programmers, speak the language, and aren't
| terrified of looking stupid. But the "nothing is sacred, everyone
| is eager to help" culture is unevenly distributed. For someone in
| the wrong geography, wrong time zone, wrong background, with no
| colleagues or meetups, LLMs are often the _first_ non-judgmental
| contact with the field. Maybe after a few months of that, they'll
| finally feel confident enough to show up in a Discord, or ask a
| maintainer a question.
|
| There's no royal road, agreed. But historically we've
| underestimated how much of the "road" was actually just gate
| friction: social anxiety, jargon, bad docs, hostile forums. LLMs
| don't magically install kung-fu in your brain, but they do
| quietly remove a lot of that friction. For some people, that's
| the difference between "never starts" and "actually learns the
| hard way."
| wrs wrote:
| "LLM as Socratic tutor" isn't quite right, because the LLM
| can't be trusted. But I have had great results with "LLM as
| debating partner". Basically, I try to explain the thing I'm
| learning and have the LLM critique me. Then I critique the LLM,
| because it usually says something that doesn't quite make sense
| (or I ask it cite its source and it recants its statement). A
| few rounds of this is (I think) really helpful for cementing my
| understanding.
| bitwize wrote:
| Nobody needed Google in 1995 because Google didn't exist until
| 1998.
| wrs wrote:
| "I don't think you need LLMs to learn programming."
|
| What the... Are we already to the point where you have to say
| this to people?
| GrowingSideways wrote:
| Yes. I work with teenagers and young adults teaching them how
| to program, both directly and as a support skill. These are
| bright young people who can work through problems with enough
| time--but LLMs allow them through these problems in a minute or
| two.
|
| I've taken, particularly in people learning programming as a
| support skill, to teaching them how to verify the solution
| rather than asking them to deal with hours of frustration while
| their peers don't bother. A tool is a tool, as sad as it makes
| me to say looking back on teaching myself how to code 20 years
| ago.
| self_awareness wrote:
| > I don't think you need LLMs to learn programming.
|
| Are we already in this state? That people can't do programming
| without LLMs?
|
| LLMs are not old at all. It's literally the newest thing, and we
| already need to convince ourselves that we can live without it?
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| The section headed "A World Without People" is the most
| interesting. We all need someone to tell us we're wrong-headed
| every now and again. Simply because we often are, and that's
| perfectly fine.
| uriegas wrote:
| I agree with the point that learning requires work. In general,
| everything worth doing requires work. This is one of the things I
| often have to remind myself, otherwise I spend the whole day
| 'learning' and I just read a bunch of stuff online that I then
| forget, instead of trying something out which I actually will
| learn and understand.
| fcholf wrote:
| I agree, though, you can still work toward understanding using
| an LLM (and take it from a skeptical) by, e.g., using them as
| challengers to your ideas.
|
| That said, I think it requires a lot of self discipline and
| should be complemented with other methods and sources of
| information to be useful. As a teacher, I really try to prevent
| my undergraduate students from taking the easy road of using
| LLMs to solve every easyish problem I give them to *learn*.
| Sure, they did the homework but most of them did not learn
| anything while doing it and they finish their first year
| without having learnt anything actionable regarding computer
| science (observe that I use a different approach with students
| from other areas, though I still think it is good to spend a
| few days without relying on LLMs).
|
| I often use a sport analogy to land my point which works with
| them, so let me share it here. If you want to learn how to run
| a marathon and drive 42km every day, then you are certainly
| (hopefully ?) a better driver but nowhere near to running a
| marathon (fortunately, no one has yet challenged me with the
| fact that running a marathon is way less useful to get a job
| than driving).
|
| (edit: grammar, spelling)
| uriegas wrote:
| I think LLMs are helpful for understanding code. I used to spend
| like an hour trying to find where something very specific was
| made, and now I can just ask an LLM and it finds it right a way
| and is able to explain how the code works. This is probably the
| thing that has saved me most of the time.
|
| What is your take on LLMs for programming?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Love the post. I think it comes from a good place.
|
| _> And I got to where I am thanks to people like me who wrote
| down and shared their knowledge openly and freely. I've benefited
| from open source. From books people have published online for
| free and courses they've given away. I've learned a great deal
| from people I chat with online, over forums, and at meetups where
| people give presentations to share their knowledge and work._
|
| I can relate to that.
|
| However, though I don't _need_ an LLM, I have found them to be
| _extremely_ useful in learning new stuff. I probably used an LLM
| to learn a dozen different new things, just today.
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