Learning with AI: An experiment

Piping Challenge I wanted to try how well AI can explain a long chain of piping commands. The command: Explain the pipeline: history | cut -c 8- | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head I used ClaudeAI. I told it to explain the pipe command in Linux simply and then explain each command, explaining the input and output. Prompt I want to understand the pipe command in Linux. I want you to simply explain piping and then explain each of these commands and then walk me step by step on what the outputs and inputs will be for each step: Explain the pipeline: history | cut -c 8- | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head I hadn’t understood what unique commands were, so the extra explanation made it clear. I was still confused about the 8 characters in the cut -c 8- command so I asked Claude to explain this to me. This didn’t make sense as in the initial explanation ClaudeAI had shown me only single digit history numbers in its output. So I asked ClaudeAI about this. I called it out. I tested the history command on my terminal. And then I showed my input to ClaudeAI. Conclusion AI might not be the greatest starting point when learning new or complex concepts. You are better off learning from other sources and then confirming your understanding with AI playing the role of a student you are teaching what you have learned. It’s also important to test out something in your own environment. Like I tested the history command on my terminal.

May 8, 2025 - 09:59

Piping Challenge

I wanted to try how well AI can explain a long chain of piping commands.

The command:

I used ClaudeAI. I told it to explain the pipe command in Linux simply and then explain each command, explaining the input and output.

Prompt

I want to understand the pipe command in Linux. I want you to simply explain piping and then explain each of these commands and then walk me step by step on what the outputs and inputs will be for each step: Explain the pipeline: history | cut -c 8- | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head

I hadn’t understood what unique commands were, so the extra explanation made it clear.

I was still confused about the 8 characters in the cut -c 8- command so I asked Claude to explain this to me.

This didn’t make sense as in the initial explanation ClaudeAI had shown me only single digit history numbers in its output.

So I asked ClaudeAI about this.

I called it out.

I tested the history command on my terminal.

And then I showed my input to ClaudeAI.

Conclusion

AI might not be the greatest starting point when learning new or complex concepts. You are better off learning from other sources and then confirming your understanding with AI playing the role of a student you are teaching what you have learned.

It’s also important to test out something in your own environment. Like I tested the history command on my terminal.