Hacker News front pageMark Seemann8 min readintermediate
Learning Programming in an Age of LLMs
Summary
Mark Seemann reflects on learning to program in the era of LLMs, sharing personal history, doubts about AI‑driven development, and advice to focus on fundamentals and ask verifiable questions of models.
- LLM assistance can hide gaps in understanding; when problems arise the lack of depth becomes painful.
- Understanding the layer directly below (and above) your current abstraction remains a solid rule of thumb for troubleshooting.
- Use LLMs for falsifiable, concrete questions (e.g., code refactoring) rather than open‑ended advice.
- Fundamental knowledge (data structures, language semantics, OS concepts) still provides long‑term value, even if AI can speed up some learning.
As AI‑assisted coding becomes mainstream, engineers must balance productivity gains with the risk of building systems they cannot fully comprehend, impacting maintainability and career resilience.
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