Show HN: Dev atrophy test – Can you still code without AI?

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> no handholding

I still feel more like the LLMs are the ones who need the handholding.

lumberjack test - can you down a tree without chainsaw?

Always love a fun quiz, but some of the example answers are just incorrect. Eg: `document.example('example')` to select a HTML button element. Others are to rigid to allow the true breadth of correct answers.

Ya'll might want to switch from V0 to claude code.

I don’t see in which context coding without aid is helpful:

- at work, nobody cares. They only want shipped features.

- at home, I only care about having fun (and that doesn’t necessarily mean to not use tools like ides, llms, autocomplete, etc)

being good at software design isn't about memorizing the specific details of a single language or subjects

languages are subject to change

hire people who are good at finding information

not someone who is good at blindly memorizing details of a specific instance of a language or system

someone who memorized every single detail of COBOL will be a worse coder than someone who spent time thinking about abstract thinking and problem solving

you'll want to double check everything anyway

this shows of a fundamental lack of insight into what it means to be a good developer

it's like someone who thinks they are smarter than everyone else because they spent thousands on hours on playing chess

this student who has memorized the full specification of HTML, CSS and Javascript will be useless if you ask them a question about lets say Erlang, and is easily replaced by a book

> This is almost always a consequence of relying too much on ChatGPT and vibe coding tools.

How do you know it's not because they are to put it bluntly stupid or lazy?

Have you even dogfooded your quiz once before publishing to the Web?

> JS methods to select an element

> YOUR ANSWER

> getMethod: "getQuerySelectorAll"

> EXAMPLE CORRECT ANSWER

> const button = document.example('example');

TypeError: document.example is not a function

----

> Create an HTML form with an input field and submit button:

> YOUR ANSWER

> <input type="submit">Submit</input>

> EXAMPLE CORRECT ANSWER

> <button type="submit">Submit</button>

Not incorrect answer assessed as incorrect.

I am not worried about personal atrophy. I am worried about young people who never learn the fundamentals and blindly believe everything the llm say.

Typical of the dark side of HN, thinking that web programming represents software development, instead of being just one kind of information systems, which are a subset of software applications.

some of the tests and standard answers are strange such as the one with debounced function not considering whether there should only be 1 arg / the dev could use the arguments keyword and call, the filter numbers question insisting on === instead of == etc etc.

Someone spending too much time in wonderland. Code already ate through your common sense. Next.

"Questions cover HTML, CSS, JavaScript, databases, and Node." Ah yes, as if Web development = All coding

So as someone who's not written Javascript in a decade, this on the face of it seems wrong to me:

Your example correct answer to "Write a function that returns the sum of two parameters" is

    function myFunction(example) {
    example
    }

Is the atrophy coming from inside the house?

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