Ask HN: How to avoid skill atrophy in LLM-assisted programming era?

Re:Ask HN: How to avoid skill atrophy in LLM-assisted progra... by tjr on Tuesday January 27, 2026 @03:24PM (#46785994)

What then is your interest in avoiding skill atrophy? It sounds like you realize that outsourcing your programming work to AI will likely result in skill atrophy, but you are so happy with the results that you are okay with this. (And so are a lot of people! Not saying it's a bad decision.)

What change are you after?

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Re:Ask HN: How to avoid skill atrophy in LLM-assisted progra... by py4 on Tuesday January 27, 2026 @05:24PM (#46787950)

i'm trying to see what i can do to stay relevant

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Re:Ask HN: How to avoid skill atrophy in LLM-assisted progra... by ipaddr on Tuesday January 27, 2026 @07:46PM (#46789452)

Aren't you making yourself irrelevant and the first group to be cropped out of the market or do you see others who don't use llms as much as dinos who will be filtered away first because your method offers more productivity?

I personally rarely have been paid for productivity. How fast I can put out features rarely earns me extra money. What people want is someone who understands what they want and finds a way to deliver when we agreed to and spots pitfalls along the way.

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Re:Ask HN: How to avoid skill atrophy in LLM-assisted progra... by direwolf20 on Tuesday January 27, 2026 @08:21PM (#46789773)

If LLMs are the best programmers then programming is obsolete so why do you want programming skills?

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Re:Ask HN: How to avoid skill atrophy in LLM-assisted progra... by ezersilva on Tuesday February 03, 2026 @06:19AM (#46869512)

you need to be able to review what the LLM is writing.

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