What would you do if had LLMs as a kid?
It’s time we start having these conversations — whether we like it or not. I caught myself thinking about this just today while vibe coding a side project primarily for myself — a Telegram bot to download YouTube videos and long podcasts, splitting them into multiple files.
Over time wanted more and more of the features like ad removal, creating clips and captioned gifs. Heck, I even added search, bi-weekly recommendations and subscriptions.
Sounds like a dream, but in reality I had to spend obnoxiously long time testing every little feature Claude screwed up. Because of course it did on the first try.
But when it works, it really is a joy to use. You ask what needs to be done and simply don’t bother getting into implementation details, docker image build errors and many other annoying issues. It truly is a joy to use, even if it is very unreliable.
This got me thinking: what if I had access to these tools as a kid? I sure did love tinkering. But I took time to study and learn the intricacies of how things worked. Now it can be as easy as “create this, make no mistakes”.
However, this mind mindset can hinder oneself. You stop thinking through, but instead you become the consumer of your own product. And you lose control that way.
What’s worse — if you are starting out, this can sabotage your progress in learning and professional growth. Fine, if your aim is to be a marketer or a non-technical entrepreneur, fatal if you aim to build something that you want to actively participate in. Because you won’t be able to just like how you cannot participate in a medical conference if you are software engineer. You will simply lack the skill and knowledge and no amount of prompting will fix that.
There is another mode of functioning, however: you could use LLMs to study and practice, make them your mentor. But for that you have to have enough self awareness and determination. That’s increasingly hard to come by in a world were moving fast and breaking things is encouraged.