> LLM overlords are making that much harder.
LLMs can explain complex things to humans with tons of specific context that you don’t find in textbooks or even a google search.
It’s probably never been easier to grasp a large codebase than it is today for example. You can probe and ask specific questions without going through a maze of imports and relationships and config files yourself.
Learning things will always be up to the person, it’s still a choice and dedication to a craft can still be taught.
> LLMs can explain complex things to humans
I keep meeting people who think this and have enormous understanding gaps in the topics they've had an LLM teach them.
The absolute worst judge of how well someone understands a complex topic is the novice themselves.
The difference now is that the learning is optional (more often but not always) to getting the task done.
When gaining mastery is not a requirement to doing novice-level work, many fewer people will get there. It takes more dedication than it did before.