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Mark Seemann Says Learning to Program Cannot Be Sped Up, and the Bottleneck Was Never the Teacher
Posted September 16 and on HN within three hours at 83 points and 52 comments, Seemann responds to a reader who built a working system without understanding it. His position: 'I doubt that it's possible to significantly speed up human learning. The bottleneck is hardly the teachers nor the materials, but how fast a human brain can absorb new knowledge.' The practical rule he offers is narrower than the usual advice — ask LLMs falsifiable questions with verifiable answers, not open-ended ones like 'what should I learn next' — and he closes on his economics background, noting technological displacement has historically not benefited the displaced.
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