Hacker News

What should we learn now?(ducktape.blot.im)

21 points by totalperspectiv 11 hours ago | 8 comments

Learn something adjacent to coding. I think breadth wins over depth. Knowing how to do 10 disciplines 50% of the way is a super power. Rely on LLM-based tools to do the other 50%.

This is, unfortunately, contrary to previous advice of specializing.

It’s a great time to be a jack of all trades and master of none.

[–] incognito124 7 hours ago

+1. There's a good book "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World" that lays out how it's better to be an all arounder than min-max skills and life areas. The advice actually predates LLMs!

I always felt repulsed by specialization due to diminishing returns and the fact im curious about everything. But I though about it and picking up various experiences to avoid a specialization is, in a sense, itself a specialization: it's unlikely there's another person with a similar set of experiences!

Reminds me of how Python is termed "2nd best pick for every task". It's rarely the best but it covers a lot of ground, so by starting with it, you can uncover what would be a better language. So a generalist can also be a first pick for something, at least until it's more clear about what's a better pick.

Anyways sorry for rambling, I agree with you. If a young person is reading this, the worst thing you can do is specialize too early (read the book I mentioned!); go explore the world first before settling and picking a direction

[–] fyredge 4 hours ago

There's nothing about specialization to be repulsed by. Specialization is what gave us our the society and economy. That's not to say generalists are not important, I simply view them as the southpaw of abilities. There exists some healthy ratio of generalists in a specialist world to bridge knowledge domains. Too many generalists will not be able to push progress in a specific domain, just like too many southpaws will reduce their advantage in competitive sports.

[–] OrangeDelonge 3 hours ago

I think the more popular advise has always been to be T-shaped instead of a pure specialist

[–] lubujackson 5 hours ago

100% disagree with the "stick your head in the sand" defense of AI exposure. Instead, use it to understand along the way.

I had to learn coding when a reference book was all I had to help when I got stuck. Then the Google and StackOverflow came and people complained about no-knowledge coders copy-pasting their way through tasks. AI is just an extension of that.

Yes, you can push out 5,000 line PRs blindly, but you can also use AI to help you speed past blockers, to investigate why things are structured in a certain way, explain what a block of code is doing, propose 3 alternative approaches and explain each, etc.

We say "coding is only part of what a SWE does" but you can't do the rest without understanding what the code is doing and meant to do, and why.

[–] nicbou 3 hours ago

In other areas of life, computers and especially AI have us a real world Pokédex/Hitchhiker's Guide. You can point it at anything and learn about it in as much depth as you desire. You just have to show curiosity and a tiny bit of effort.

With LLMs turning everything I valued to shit, I have turned my attention to nature, ary, feelings, relationships, and the other things that it cannot reach. These things are also worth being curious about.

[–] chrisra 7 hours ago

More pressure to work off hours, boo.

[–] aarjaneiro 6 hours ago

> An AI spellchecked this

Spell checking via AI seems... pointless? Unless this is a means of stating "AI did a once-over of this before I hit submit" in which case this is somewhat disingenuous.