I've learned a lot of shit while getting AI to give me the answers, because I wanted to understand why it did what it did. It saves me a lot of time trying to fix things that would have never worked, so I can just spend time analyzing success.
There might be value in learning from failure, but my guess is that there's more value in learning from success, and if the LLM doesn't need me to succeed my time is better spent pushing into territory where it fails so I can add real value.
>I've learned a lot of shit while getting AI to give me the answers
I would argue you're learning less than you might believe. Similarly to how people don't learn math by watching others solve problems, you're not going to learn to become a better engineer/problem solver by reading the output of ChatGPT.
If I know what I want to do and how I want to do it, and there's plumbing to make that a reality, am I not still solving problems? I'm just paying less attention to stuff that machines can successfully automate.
Regarding leveling up as an engineer, at this point in my career it's called management.
Do you honestly think that’s how people learn?
This is an example of a book on Common Lisp
https://gigamonkeys.com/book/practical-a-simple-database
What you usually do is follow the book instructions and get some result, then go to do some exploration on your own. There’s no walk in the dark trying to figure your own path.
Once you learn what works, and what does not, then you’ll have a solid foundation to tackle more complex subject. That’s the benefit of having a good book and/or a good teacher to guide you to the path of mastering. Using a slot machine is more tortuous than that.
I don't find it to be more torturous than that. In fact, if I were to go back and learn lisp again, I think I'd be a lot more motivated seeing how to build something interesting out of the gate rather than the toy programs I learned in my racket course.
Also, for a lot of things, that is how people learn because there aren't good textbooks available.
Define interesting.
I was helping a few people on getting started with an Android Development bootcamp and just being able to run the default example and get their bearing around the IDE was interesting to them. And I remember when I was first learning python. Just doing basic variable declaration and arithmetic was interesting. Same with learning C and being able to write tic-tac-toe.
I think a lot of harm is being done by making beginner have expectations that would befit people that have years of experience. Like you can learn docker in 2 months to someone that doesn't even know Linux exists or have never encountered the word POSIX.
Please do read the following article: https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html
Understanding "why it works" is one thing, understanding "why it should work this way and not another, and what the alternatives are" is entirely different. AI shows you just one of countless correct implementations. You might understand that single implementation, but not the entire theory behind it