There are things that aren't needed because we have found easier ways to solve the problem they were solving. In contrast, there are things that exists that are only to make the job easier, no to make it go away. You don't need to light a fire because of how house are heated or food are made. But you still need to learn arithmetic to use a calculator. There's a difference between the two.

If the goal is to learn, the means don't matter much as long as the right attitude is there. But if one only wish to appear knowledgeable, LLM has indeed make it way easier.