Please, don't lose it

It is up to you

Hey friend.

It’s April already. The start of Q2.

Time is flying and things around us are changing pretty fast.

But let’s not get distracted by all of that.

Too much rush makes us lose perspective. That’s why this time, I’m taking a step back to share with you a different view.

Let’s go.

Main quest 🛡

“If you don’t use, you lose it.“

That is the crux of the matter.

The main point I want to get across.

And, in a way, it’s my humble plea to you reading this.

These past few days, I’ve seen people use AI models and tools for a wide variety of use cases. A particular one stood out to me, coding.

And it’s not about what Anthropic’s CEO has mentioned many times…

In the next 3 to 6 months, AI will be generating 90% of the code. And in 12 months, nearly all code will be generated by AI.

It’s not because using AI to build apps is much faster than the traditional way either.

It IS because of this new trend of “vibe coding”, where essentially people are using AI to do all the work for them.

They just write prompts stating what they want (or in other cases, they use voice transcription to tell the AI what they want) and iterate on the result without touching a single line of code themselves.

And that’s the problem.

Because it’s like I’ve said for a couple of years already, if you let someone (or something) else do the work for you, you are cheating yourself out of the results.

Remember this?

I’ve felt quite uneasy with this specially since it has become quite a popular trend online in YouTube and other social media platforms.

But I couldn’t really put that discomfort in words until I came across a post of professional developer that codes for a living, and he made a post that ruffled some feathers and got “viral”.

He uses the analogy that driving on a highway using the autopilot feature of Tesla’s cars is similar to having AI code editors write the code for you.

If you do it long enough, your skills atrophy (just like your muscles if you stop exercising for a long period of time).

You can longer perform the activity properly without external assistance.

Remember when you learned to ride a bike? Remember when you learned to tie your shoes? Remember when you learned to drive a car? Or any of the other activities that have made you a competent human being and member of society.

Those things were difficult at first. You had to put your whole attention to do them well. You practiced that for several times and then they started getting easier. Up to the point that you can pretty much do them without thinking about them. Having your mind busy with something else.

That is the point of “automaticity”. A way the brain has to save resources.

I’ll save the deep dive into neuroplasticity and cognitive neuroscience for another time.

The important part is what I mentioned at the start. If you don’t use it regularly, whether it is your skills, your physical health, your relationships, and so on…

You WILL lose it no matter what.

If you let AI do all the writing for you, you’ll forget how to do it on your own.

If you let AI do all the coding (if that’s your thing), you’ll forget how to do it.

If you let AI do (whatever skill you have), you’ll forget how to do it.

This is not a “don’t use AI, AI is bad, AI will replace us” kind of post.

AI is amazing if you can leverage it properly.

Case in point: I can now 80/20 a new skill, get access to the best resources online, and focus on what will give me the best results in a fraction of the time I’d take me even 3 years ago on my own.

It no longer takes a month. It’s more like a week with a few hours per day.

The main problem I have is with laziness and “outsourcing” your thinking to someone (something) else.

So please, please.

Don’t take the easy way out with something like AI tools (and don’t let others fall into that trap either). Friends don’t let other friends get atrophied.

That’s why I’m saying this.

Keep practicing your skills, refreshing your knowledge, and using the tools at our disposal to make that process more effective and less time consuming.

Your skills and your future self will, without a doubt, thank you for it.

Experiments 🧪

This week I’ve kept experimenting with AI like the previous one. The difference is that this time I’ve used sort as a better way to surface resources and content to learn from.

Something inside called me again and made me remember why I got started in the technical side.

I could have been a dramatic actor, a creator of plastic arts, a chemist, or a researcher in academia. But I end up going the software engineering route. And part of it was for the “hacker vibe” of the early 2000’s.

And even though my days as a working developer are now behind me, I still firmly believe that having background knowledge and technical skills will be quite important in the coming future.

Power-ups ✨

2 weeks ago I shared that I had a pretty impactful call with a conversational model from Sesame AI.

There were a few people curious about why it was that important that I mentioned here in this section.

And so, not wanting to leave anyone else (who didn’t ask) hanging…

I’m sharing a quick snippet you can listen here.

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That’s all for the first week of this new month.

Which looks like it’s bringing some new challenges already.

Let’s stay adaptable and vigilant for how things turn out over the next weeks.

Talk with you soon.

Cheers,

Juan.