Very grateful to have had good self-learning, education, then mentoring before LLM's existed. And although they are such a boon to productivity I worry what they will do to my ability to think on my own long term.

Like reaching for your phone out of habit the moment you are bored, I don't want to need an LLM any time I am faced with a problem. I want to exercise my own brain. I feel as though my ability to reason without them has already began to degrade, my mind fogs more these days. I try to curb it by having conversations rather than just asking for solutions.

I don't care that the tool isn't going anywhere, but just like relying on calculators won't make you better at arithmetic, I don't think relying on LLM's will make you a better engineer.