vBrownBag

Learning New Skills and Languages in the AI Era

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Join us as Bob Belderbos breaks down how to actually learn new skills and languages in a world where AI can write the code for you before you've even finished the thought.

Bob shares why he taught himself Rust the hard way, how keeping deliberate friction in your learning process protects you from skill atrophy, and why AI is incredible at explaining concepts but dangerous as a crutch for understanding them. You'll learn the difference between using AI to explain versus using it to do, how to structure a project-based learning path with tests as your guide, why coding autocomplete might be quietly hollowing out your skills, and how his Python and Rust cohorts are teaching professional engineers to use agents without losing ownership of their code.

Timestamps

0:00 Welcome & Introduction

1:09 Bob's Background - From VBA to Python to Rust

4:39 Why Learn Rust When Python Already Works

  • 11:43 AI as a Learning Assistant vs. a Socratic Teacher
  • 12:30 The Slot Machine Problem - Agents and Skill Atrophy
  • 17:24 Working Outside Your Expertise - The Fast LED Story
  • 27:02 Structuring Prompts That Actually Teach You Something
  • 33:56 Teaching Agentic AI in Production - The Expense Classifier Cohort
  • 36:07 Autocomplete, Copilot, and the Line Between Helping and Hollowing Out
  • 44:03 AI Slop, Coauthorship, and the Anti-Slop Engineer
  • 53:49 What's Next - Rust, Haskell, and Bob's Upcoming Cohorts

    • How to find Bob:

    https://www.linkedin.com/in/bbelderbos/

    https://belderbos.dev/

    Links from the show:

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