I feel similarly that some such learning opportunities are just going to be larger rabbit holes than the thing is worth, but in those cases I'll just prefer to do it a different way that I do know or is worth learning.

E.g. maybe it would be very 'elegant' or rather concise awk if I could overcome the learning opportunity, but like you I would probably decide not to; I'll do it with the sed I do know even if it means some additional piping and cutting or grepping or whatever that awk could've done in one, because I already know it and it's going to be clearer to me and probably anyone else I'm working with.

I think we're saying quite similar things, but my point is I wouldn't be deleting it, dismissing the idea, and disappointing the colleague ready to teach me about it - because I never would've been willing to blindly try broken AI generated (or however sourced) code that I didn't understand in the first place.

You don't have to master it. But some things are just well worth learning at least the basics of: Your programming language of choice, your shell, your editor, your version control system.

An afternoon learning your way around bash or vim will save you countless of hours of work, just because you will know what the building blocks are, you will be able to ask the right questions directly instead of chasing down alleys.

It's not the same thing as learning yet another language. It's a separate type of tool. Developing software without knowing an editor or a shell is like refusing to learn what a file is or what an ip address is. Sure, you can probably get work done in roundabout ways, but it's certainly not rational.

I like learning a little about a lot of things as I’m the entrepreneurial type, but I’m really good at very few things. I appreciate having workers who specialize in one or two things really deeply though.