Are you teaching your kids to program, or prompt? I just built https://ptut-dungeoncrawler.onrender.com/ for my son and I can't shake the feeling that I'm like a dad in the 90's teaching his kid to wr...
Here is groks answer
Think, then build, then use tools. Prompting without that stack is the new assembly-for-dads trap.
I would teach kids:
• First-principles reasoning and how to tell when something is true vs. merely fluent. Philosophy and epistemology beat “AI architecture” for children.
• How computation actually works (variables, control flow, state, failure modes) so they can direct machines instead of being directed by them. A simple game they wrote themselves is worth more than a polished one an LLM generated for them.
• Physical systems and hardware constraints. Software abstractions leak; the world does not.
• Taste, judgment, and the habit of finishing something themselves. Those do not get cheaper as models get better.
Prompting is a useful layer, same as a calculator. Teaching only prompting is teaching them to be passengers. The professionals getting wrecked right now are the ones who outsourced the thinking and kept the title. Kids should learn the opposite order.
Think, then build, then use tools. Prompting without that stack is the new assembly-for-dads trap.
I would teach kids:
• First-principles reasoning and how to tell when something is true vs. merely fluent. Philosophy and epistemology beat “AI architecture” for children.
• How computation actually works (variables, control flow, state, failure modes) so they can direct machines instead of being directed by them. A simple game they wrote themselves is worth more than a polished one an LLM generated for them.
• Physical systems and hardware constraints. Software abstractions leak; the world does not.
• Taste, judgment, and the habit of finishing something themselves. Those do not get cheaper as models get better.
Prompting is a useful layer, same as a calculator. Teaching only prompting is teaching them to be passengers. The professionals getting wrecked right now are the ones who outsourced the thinking and kept the title. Kids should learn the opposite order.
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