I'm on the tail end of my 35+ year developer career, but one thing I always do with any LLM stuff is this: I'll ask it to solve something generally I know I COULD solve, I just don't feel like it.
Example: Yesterday I was working with an Open API 3.0 schema. I know I could "fix" the schema to conform to a sample input, I just didn't feel like it because it's dull, I've done it before, and I'd learn nothing. So I asked Claude to do it, and it was fine. Then the "Example" section no longer matched the schema, so Claude wrote me a fitting example.
But the key here is I would have learned nothing by doing this.
There are, however, times where I WOULD have learned something. So whenever I find the LLM has shown me something new, I put that knowledge in my "knowledge bank". I use the Anki SRS flashcard app for that, but there are other ways, like adding to your "TIL blog" (which I also do), or taking that new thing and writing it out from scratch, without looking at the solution, a few times and compiling/running it. Then trying to come up with ways this knowledge can be used in different ways; changing the requirements and writing that.
Basically getting my brain to interact with this new thing in at least 2 ways so it can synthesize with other things in your brain. This is important.
Learning a new (spoken) language uses this a lot. Learn a new word? Put it in 3 different sentences. Learn a new phrase? Create at least 2-3 new phrases based on that.
I'm hoping this will keep my grey matter exercised enough to keep going.
Example: Yesterday I was working with an Open API 3.0 schema. I know I could "fix" the schema to conform to a sample input, I just didn't feel like it because it's dull, I've done it before, and I'd learn nothing. So I asked Claude to do it, and it was fine. Then the "Example" section no longer matched the schema, so Claude wrote me a fitting example.
But the key here is I would have learned nothing by doing this.
There are, however, times where I WOULD have learned something. So whenever I find the LLM has shown me something new, I put that knowledge in my "knowledge bank". I use the Anki SRS flashcard app for that, but there are other ways, like adding to your "TIL blog" (which I also do), or taking that new thing and writing it out from scratch, without looking at the solution, a few times and compiling/running it. Then trying to come up with ways this knowledge can be used in different ways; changing the requirements and writing that.
Basically getting my brain to interact with this new thing in at least 2 ways so it can synthesize with other things in your brain. This is important.
Learning a new (spoken) language uses this a lot. Learn a new word? Put it in 3 different sentences. Learn a new phrase? Create at least 2-3 new phrases based on that.
I'm hoping this will keep my grey matter exercised enough to keep going.