[iepathos]

Research on calculator use in early math education (notably the Hembree & Dessart meta-analysis of 79 studies) found that students given calculators performed better at math - including on paper-and-pencil tests without calculators. The hypothesis is that calculators handle computation, freeing cognitive bandwidth and time for problem-solving and conceptual understanding. Problem solving and higher level concepts matter far more than memorizing multiplication and division tables.

I think about this often when discussing AI adoption with people. It's also relevant to this VS Code discussion which is tangential to the broader AI assisted development discussion. This post conflates tool proficiency with understanding. You can deeply understand Git's DAG model while never typing git reflog. Conversely, you can memorize every terminal command and still design terrible systems.

The scarce resource for most developers isn't "knows terminal commands" - it's "can reason about complex systems under uncertainty." If a tool frees up bandwidth for that, that's a net win. Not to throw shade at hyper efficient terminal users, I live in the terminal and recommend it, but it isn't going to make you a better programmer just by using it instead of an IDE for writing code. It isn't reasoning and understanding about complex systems that you gain from living in a terminal. You gain efficiency, flexibility, and nerd cred - all valuable, but none of them are systems thinking.

The auto-complete point in the post is particularly ironic given how critical it is for terminal users and that most vim users also rely heavily on auto-complete. Auto-complete does not limit your effectiveness, it's provably the opposite.

[graemep]

That you for mentioning that. I have often argued with people in favour of my approach (home ed so I got to choose how to teach my kids from about 9 to 16) of not doing things like memorising times tables and learning arithmetic techniques like long division.

[jftuga]

This is a well-thought-out critique. Thanks for sharing your insights.