Ask HN: How to avoid skill atrophy in LLM-assisted programming era?

Your technical skills are shaped by market demand, and they always have been.

What skills are atrophying that would be useful in the future?

If you're letting LLMs do more than assisting, don't. That's my advice. But if like you're title they're just assisting you, then what skills are atrophying? You still review the code and understand it right? You still second guess the LLMs proposed solutions and look for better approaches right?

Articulating how LLM assistance is different than junior programmers writing code and assisting would be useful, everyone has different setups and workflows, so it's hard to say in my opinion.

The skills that atrophy are the ones you weren't using anyway. If you let the LLM do the interesting/engaging parts, that's on you, not the tool

Have a personal site and passion (read: not side gig) projects you work on outside of work. Hand code, get frustrated, be ambitious, don’t open Claude every time you forget a tailwind class

If you don’t have ideas, spent more time away from the screen, they will come.

Ask HN 1800: How to avoid losing spinning wheel skills in new spinning jenny era?

Ask HN 1920: How to avoid losing farrier skills in new automobile era?

Ask HN 1980: How to avoid losing typewriting and shorthand skills in new microcomputer era?

Ask HN 1990: How to avoid losing assembly language skills in new C++ era?

Ask HN 1995: How to avoid losing DOS TUI app dev skills in new Windows era?

Ask HN 2000: How to avoid losing Visual Basic skills in new web application era?

(The answer, btw, is if you are still interested in such niche skills, then you just have to practice on your own, or find a niche product or marketplace).

One way is to not give in to LLM hype and ignore LLM grifters.