Only if you don’t care about your own cognitive decline
That sounds like Socrates’ argument that writing would weaken people’s memories.
And absolutely, people will probably forget the syntax by heart if they don’t type it as frequently. Personally, knowing syntax is not very valuable to me, as it’s just a means to an end. And whether that leads to cognitive decline or not, is really up to who’s using the tool.
Saying it leads to cognitive decline is saying you can’t use an LLM and have critical thinking, which I can’t agree with.
That sounds like Socrates’ argument that writing would weaken people’s memories.
Saying it leads to cognitive decline is saying you can’t use an LLM and have critical thinking, which I can’t agree with.
That’s not me saying it. MIT, Harvard, and others have released numerous studies that show using LLMs does exactly that, reduce critical thinking. You can disagree all you want but until you do the science you’re disagreeing with a growing body of actual experts.
Are those studies in the context of software development? What are the tasks at hand? Do they evaluate critical thinking on matters that people actually care about or on chores? Were they instructed to use LLMs in a particular way that is equivalent to their personal preference?
You can’t pull a wildcard saying something like that because it’s too broad of a conclusion.
This is where you go look at any of the studies and start figuring out for yourself.
They’ve been looking at it in several contexts including software development, general problem solving, reading comprehension, writing ability, and more.
In some they were instructed to use LLMs certain ways, in others they weren’t. That’s the neat thing about so many studies being done is they’ve used a wide set of methodologies.
well, you didn’t link any and you’re the one generalizing it, so the proof is on you to provide. I doubt their conclusions are like you’re making them sound.
Their conclusions are right in the abstract in black and white terms. And this is just a teeny tiny sample of the papers that exist all saying the same thing.
Firmly agree. I spent 6 years coding in python as a daily language, then I swapped to using nodejs for 10 years, only using python on and off. I went to make a basic script with python the other day and I had to look up how to convert a set over to a list.
That’s the thoughts of a good engineer. You don’t think in code and you shouldn’t have to. Loosing your memory on the particular syntax is hardly an issue. You’ll still churn out a small program in under a day. You need to remember that people who really don’t know how to code take months for a product half as good.
Why should anyone seriously concern themselves with memorizing all the syntaxes? That’s like memorizing all the dates in History class. It takes so much bandwidth away from other concerns with higher payout. Go learn some architecture, some risk management, stuff like that.
Only if you don’t care about your own cognitive decline, property theft, and climate damage
That sounds like Socrates’ argument that writing would weaken people’s memories.
And absolutely, people will probably forget the syntax by heart if they don’t type it as frequently. Personally, knowing syntax is not very valuable to me, as it’s just a means to an end. And whether that leads to cognitive decline or not, is really up to who’s using the tool.
Saying it leads to cognitive decline is saying you can’t use an LLM and have critical thinking, which I can’t agree with.
That’s not me saying it. MIT, Harvard, and others have released numerous studies that show using LLMs does exactly that, reduce critical thinking. You can disagree all you want but until you do the science you’re disagreeing with a growing body of actual experts.
Are those studies in the context of software development? What are the tasks at hand? Do they evaluate critical thinking on matters that people actually care about or on chores? Were they instructed to use LLMs in a particular way that is equivalent to their personal preference?
You can’t pull a wildcard saying something like that because it’s too broad of a conclusion.
This is where you go look at any of the studies and start figuring out for yourself.
They’ve been looking at it in several contexts including software development, general problem solving, reading comprehension, writing ability, and more.
In some they were instructed to use LLMs certain ways, in others they weren’t. That’s the neat thing about so many studies being done is they’ve used a wide set of methodologies.
well, you didn’t link any and you’re the one generalizing it, so the proof is on you to provide. I doubt their conclusions are like you’re making them sound.
I didn’t link any because the internet exists. Spend literally five seconds on google.
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/1/6
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6097646
Their conclusions are right in the abstract in black and white terms. And this is just a teeny tiny sample of the papers that exist all saying the same thing.
Yeah, they never are. Scientific conclusions are generally a lot more nuanced and cautious than what this guy’s claiming. He only read headlines.
Firmly agree. I spent 6 years coding in python as a daily language, then I swapped to using nodejs for 10 years, only using python on and off. I went to make a basic script with python the other day and I had to look up how to convert a set over to a list.
If you don’t use it, you lose it is fully valid.
Not true. You came into the problem knowing:
That’s the thoughts of a good engineer. You don’t think in code and you shouldn’t have to. Loosing your memory on the particular syntax is hardly an issue. You’ll still churn out a small program in under a day. You need to remember that people who really don’t know how to code take months for a product half as good.
Why should anyone seriously concern themselves with memorizing all the syntaxes? That’s like memorizing all the dates in History class. It takes so much bandwidth away from other concerns with higher payout. Go learn some architecture, some risk management, stuff like that.