alt Hacker NewsAre employees from Anthropic botting this post now? This should be one of the top most voted posts in this website but it's nowhere on the first 3 pages.
Also remember, using claude to code might make the company you're working for richer. But you are forgetting your skills (seen it first hand), and you're not learning anything new. Professionally you are downgrading. Your next interview won't be testing your AI skills.
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If you're not learning anything new, you're doing it wrong.
There's a massive gap between just using an LLM and using it optimally, e.g. with a proper harness, customised to your workflows, with sub-agents etc.
It's a different skill-set, and if you're going to go into another job that requires manual coding without any AI tools, by all means, then you need to focus on keeping those skills sharp.
Meanwhile, my last interview already did test my AI skills.
> But you are forgetting your skills
Depends on what you consider your "skills". You can always relearn syntax, but you're certainly not going to forget your experience building architectures and developing a maintainable codebase. LLMs only do the what for you, not the why (or you're using it wrong).
> not learning anything new
Huge disagree. Or likely more "depends on how you use it". I've learned a lot since I started using AI to help me with my projects, as I prompt it in such a way that if I'm going about something the "wrong" way, it'll tell me and suggest a better approach. Or just generally help me fill out my knowledge whenever I'm vague in my planning.
> But you are forgetting your skills (seen it first hand), and you're not learning anything new.
This is just false. I may forget how to write code by hand, but I'm playing with things I never imagined I would have time and ability to, and getting engineering experience that 15 years of hands on engineering couldn't give me.
> Your next interview won't be testing your AI skills.
Which will be a very good signal to me that it's not a good match. If my next interview is leetcode-style, I will fail catastrophically, but then again, I no longer have any desire to be a code writer - AI does it better than me. I want to be a problem solver.
> Your next interview won't be testing your AI skills
Not that I disagree with your overall point, but have you interviewed recently? 90% of companies I interacted with required (!) AI skills, and me telling them how exactly I "leverage" it to increase my productivity.
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> Professionally you are downgrading
It is the contrary!
You learn using a very powerfool tool. This is a tool, like text editor and compiler.
But you focus on the logic and function more instead of syntax details and whims of the computer languages used in concert.
The analogy from construction is to be elevated from being a bricklayer to an engineer. Or using various shaped shovels with wheelbarrel versus mechanized tools like excavators and dumpers in making earthworks.
... of course for those the focus is in being the master of bricklayers, which is noble, no pun intended, saying with agreeing straight face, bricklaying is a fine skill with beautiful outputs in their area of use. For those AI is really unnecessary. An existential threat, but unnecessary.
> Your next interview won't be testing your AI skills.
You are living under quite a big rock.