this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
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Programming
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That's a bad analogy.
Using an LLM for coding gives you an initial speed up with the trade off being skill atrophy, and a build up of cognitive debt in the project.
A better analogy would be the Greek government before their national debt crisis. It would have been better to invest in themselves, not lie about their own finances, and not kick the can down the road. But they kept lying and kicking the can down the road because it was easier in the short term. Of course, we all know how that turned out in the end.
You only skill atrophy if you go and perk off playing video games while the agents cook.
If you actually are productive and spend that freed up time working on tasks the agents cant do fast and easy, aka, the hard stuff, you instead will improve your skill even faster as now you are spending most of your time on the important tasks and not wasting 95% of your workday on easy boilerplate stuff anyone with 2 braincells can pump out.
What you're describing is skill atrophy, it's just in skills you don't value.
It's also skill acquisition/reinforcement for skill you do value.