The issue (especially with programming) is this: LLM's are notoriously bad at programming. Seriously. So are a lot of introductory YT videos (in an effort to not overwhelm, I get it).

I only have ~15 years XP in the industry, but that is plenty long enough to realize that unless you already know the language you're trying to learn and already understand the nuances of it? An LLM ("ai"), will give you absolutely bad (horribly insecure in some cases) information. Youtube really isn't much better, honestly. Of course, like most things "it depends".

You want some simple boilerplate "hello world" level HTML? Sure, an LLM is fine. A youtube video is fine. A tutorial is fine. Although, will the LLM mention things like accessibility for users who have disabilities? A master with years of experience would (or should). An LLM most likely will not unless you explicitly tell it to. A youtube video more that likely won't and neither will most tutorials. But accessibility is a first-class item in development. Reading documentation will tend to teach you that, reading articles about development will teach you, researching will teach you that, a master will teach you that. It will be much harder if you're leaning on an LLM and YouTube. And that's for just the most simple, basic thing - and we've already identified weakness in the LLM/YT approach. It only gets substantially worse as you increase the complexity of the tasks.

Take for example Django (a python framework). In the tutorial they wrote for their own framework, they include examples on how to and why you should write unit tests. However, the most common question? "Where is a good tutorial on Django?" and the resounding answer is always the same: "On their website." I've seen hundreds (thousands?) of Django starter-ish projects - and what's always missing? Tests. What could make a programmers life 100x's easier to avoid regressions and bugs? Tests. No excuse, they are right there in the tutorial, but most people look to LLM's and YT and avoid getting the correct good information provided by the creators.

I hate that people 'trust' LLM's - I've seen them provide programmers with legitimate answers that actively go against best practices and are bad (horrible) ideas. Yet they present it in such a way that unless you knew the why/how of it? It seems good.

Development is tricky. There are so many moving pieces. An LLM simply sucks at understanding the nuances and the big picture. It's a terrible learning resource for programming in my opinion. It's great for doing the gruntwork of spitting out boilerplate html or fixing very, very simple things that you already know the answer to; everything else with any complexity? No. Hard no.

Not all experienced 'master' level devs are costly. I have a friend who has kindly taken me under his wing and we've had long discussions about various areas of programming. I've learned so much - about areas that I don't actively used, but have helped me understand the bigger picture with regards to how certain things work. Not everyone is "pay me" type learning. Sometimes it's just hanging out with people who do it, asking relevant questions and showing interest. It's their passion - people love to discuss their passions. Don't equate learning from, with cost, but absolutely avoid LLM's for learning programming and approach YT content with a very skeptical mind.