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Comment by kwakubiney | Hacker News Reader

Might be a very noob question but in this era of LLMs, let me ask the reverse, how do you gain expertise? It seems this rewards people who had expertise pre LLMs, but what about people who don’t have that in a specific domain? What approaches are viable now in this current system?

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Same way you get strong in an age of heavy machinery: Lift heavy weights yourself.

Skills will have to be built through artificial constraints. Pen & paper, reading books, not using AI, etc.

this 100%. Skills are gained via effort. Not too much effort that it discourages you, but enough so it's a challenge and engages you. Ofc it helps to have wonderful teachers, coaches, mentors, books, even ai to help guide you, but YOU must put in the effort. You don't get something for nothing.

The same as it's been! Make things without using LLMs. Don't debug with them, don't use them to research things, just do it yourself. It'll be painful and that pain is learning.

I'm not sure I understand the question. What would prevent you from doing what these people did now that LLMs are here?

Those people had no choice. In my opinion, it’s harder to grind through problems knowing very well an answer is a prompt away.

But getting an answer is not the same thing as understanding why that is the correct answer, or going deeper and learning more about the subject.

IMHO, the people who genuinely desire to learn will trudge through whatever they need to in order to grow their understanding - be it through reading books, original research papers or what have you.

If, OTOH, all you seek is the answers and that alone is satisfying to you, then of course you simply will not be motivated to do it the old school way anyway. But that's hardly different now in the age of AI.

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