Learning with an LLM, one year in..
I keep hearing people speak on the values of using an llm for tutoring. Last year i got a lot of heat for going this route but I resolved myself to stick at it, I hate the concept of vibe coding and to be clear, I have an IT background 30 YEARS BACK....
I started this with some good technical knowledge but no real coding skills....
After one year of mostly vanilla (js,html and css) 4 weeks TS (f**k type safety! Bad man guards at run time 🚬💨) i have been at react for 3 weeks now....
Here's my weekly sunday 9pm report...
⚔️ FULL WEEKLY REVIEW — OVERSEER REPORT
(All tutors, all visible work, all observed behaviour)
No fluff. No “great job champ.”
This is the real state of your progression.
🧠 WEEK SUMMARY
This week was dominated by:
SoT architecture runtime ownership event pipelines React integration pressure
This was not a “feature week.”
It was a:
system philosophy week
And honestly?
That matters more long-term.
⚙️ WHAT YOU ACTUALLY ACHIEVED
1️⃣ You internalized SoT properly
This was the biggest win.
You finally crossed from:
store full objects everywhere
to:
runtime references → SoT lookup
You now understand:
IDs
canonical data
runtime ownership
derived state
That changes the entire quality ceiling of your future systems.
2️⃣ You corrected state ownership direction
You accepted the criticism about systems mutating entities directly.
Now:
system → asks domain → mutates
That is a real architectural correction.
3️⃣ You started thinking in invariants
Massive moment.
Instead of:
fix duplicates later
you moved toward:
duplicates should never exist
That is engineering-level thinking.
4️⃣ Your event thinking deepened
You are no longer logging for debug only.
You are now thinking:
Could the system replay from events?
That is a serious systems question.
🧨 WHERE YOU FAILED THIS WEEK
Now the important part.
1️⃣ React exposed your inconsistency
This was your biggest weakness.
You introduced:
IDs full objects runtime injections
all inside the same model again.
Meaning:
👉 Under integration pressure, you broke your own architecture.
That matters.
2️⃣ Event ownership still unresolved
This is now your #1 architecture bottleneck.
Right now:
domain emits system emits
You still haven’t defined:
who owns authoritative truth events
Until that is solved:
replay is blurry
logs are ambiguous
architecture is partially split
3️⃣ Fighter is beginning to swell
You solved:
external mutation
but now risk:
god object syndrome
Fighter currently:
mutates state
computes stats
logs events
handles progression
handles equipment merges
That pressure is building.
🧮 RUBRIC SCORING
AreaScoreArchitecture Thinking8.8Data Modeling9State Ownership8Event Architecture7Consistency Under Pressure6.5React Integration Discipline6Testing Mindset7Learning Behaviour9.5
🎯 FINAL SCORE
8.2 / 10
Same overall bracket as before.
Why?
Because:
your architecture improved
but your consistency leaks are still dragging you down
🧙🏾♂️ OVERSEER ASSESSMENT
You are now clearly beyond:
beginner tutorial territory
Your real battlefield is now:
maintaining coherent architecture while systems expand
That is exactly where early system developers are forged or broken.
🔥 BIGGEST WIN OF THE WEEK
You stopped thinking in objects and started thinking in references.
That is enormous.
💀 BIGGEST FAILURE OF THE WEEK
You still break your own rules under pressure.
That is the thing that will hold you back if not corrected.
🎯 NEXT WEEK'S TARGETS
These are now mandatory focus areas.
1️⃣ LOCK ONE CHARACTER MODEL
No more:
sometimes IDs sometimes full objects sometimes injected runtime
Pick one architecture and enforce it.
2️⃣ DEFINE EVENT OWNERSHIP
Answer clearly:
Who emits authoritative mutation events?
Until that is locked: your replay/event model remains unstable.
3️⃣ REDUCE MODEL DRIFT
You need more:
discipline
Less:
exploration branching
4️⃣ SEPARATE REACT FROM DOMAIN
React should:
consume architecture
not:
distort architecture
Very important.
⚔️ FINAL SBI SUMMARY
Situation
You entered deeper architectural territory involving:
SoT
runtime references
event structures
React integration
Behaviour
You applied many correct engineering concepts, but lost consistency when complexity rose.
Impact
Your understanding is now ahead of your enforcement discipline.
That is now the core challenge of your entire journey.
🧠 FINAL OVERSEER NOTE
This week proved something important:
You are capable of building real systems.
Now you must prove:
You can stop those systems from drifting.
That is the next evolution.