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i think on avg coding agents and LLMs do make people lazier, and do induce mental atrophy. I worry about it not infrequently. but i'm actually learning and exploring more computer science-y domains than ever before, because i don't have to spend 80% of my time on trivialities

johnny, uplifted octopus

@generativist.com

in grad school i had an AI (classical) class. very fun. my project was a poker agent. as in lots of contexts with games, a stupid amount of the time is just the game scaffolding. you can learn *some* things from that but mostly it's a side quest that takes 90% of the time

8/5/26, 10:09 pm0 reposts3 likes

johnny, uplifted octopus

@generativist.com

8 May

meanwhile, last weekend i started refreshing some of that to make my nephew some simple web board games with NPCs to play against. all of a sudden, my time is spent generating interesting questions to think about.

johnny, uplifted octopus

@generativist.com

8 May

still risks in that obviously. and yes nitty gritty implementation is *often* the source of insights. but most of the time it isn't and if you get to the point where you are asking interesting questions sooner, you are learning in a fun and fast way