Only because the US government is putting a bar on how intelligent of a model they are willing to allow and it seems like we are already at it. China won’t stop though so it’s going to be months to a year before we get models where learning to code makes no sense.
Learning to code will never not make sense. It will never make sense to me why software engineers are so eager to make the skills they've developed over years obsolete.
Learning anything is worthwhile. Just because you code in Python it doesn't mean that knowing how instructions are processed in a CPU or the memory is managed is useless.
The excuse that we don't need to know how things work because AI will take care of it is going to bite a lot of people on their asses
> The excuse that we don't need to know how things work because AI will take care of it is going to bite a lot of people on their asses
Abstractions always led to this sort of behavior. So many of my web development peers screamed at me for being curious about what happens behind/further down then the stack we were learning, and this was decades ago. Seems it differs a lot per person, and what I've found out only later, depending on the situation; nowadays I'm comfortable with both approaches of "this is below the abstraction I actually care about" and "No, I have to dive deeper to actually understand properly the abstraction level I'm at right now"
> Code is a beautiful form of creative expression, as rich as literature or music
Something I'm trying to do right now is to build something and avoid using LLMs to write any code. I still use it to consult. I'm writing a Dota2 tournament match aggregator in Elixir that takes tournament streams and chronologically orders them in a format that makes it easier to watch them sequentially since I find YouTube hard to use for ingesting series of videos.
I'm building it because... I like programming. I like making things. I find that LLMs are making me intellectually lazy and making things with them feels unfulfilling. I want to build. It's human to want to build.
Anything a human feels is human, regardless if it's to build or to not build :) Some people prefer some ways of building, others in other ways, it's all fine. I think lots of people forget that programming is a heavily creative endeavor in the end.
If I wanted to be slightly controversial, I'd argue building a program is more like painting a painting than building a bridge, for better and worse.
I've done a lot of match aggregation in dota2 using stratz / opendota. It's a lot of fun and it will definitely make you a better programmer given how much data there is.
I'm reading Seneca right now and in one of his letters he said: "That focused concentration on one's work is deeply enjoyable in itself; the pleasure one has in the finished product after the work is done does not equal it. Now, the artist is enjoying the result of his art; while he was painting, he was enjoying the art itself".
And basically this is the problem I see in LLMs: they robbed me of these moments of enjoying the art of programming itself.
I sympathize completely with you, but.. they robbed you of these moments of enjoying the art of programming itself at your day job.
You are still free to enjoy it in your free time, just like I enjoy drawing or guitar playing in my free time. The loss we have experienced is the luxury of doing at work something we enjoy for its own sake.
Learning itself still has value.
Just because my arms and legs are shorter than others doesn't mean I should cut them off.
Just because an LLM can do most things better than I can doesn't mean I should stop learning.
Also, whether the LLM's knowledge is suited for humans is a separate issue.
This isn't limited to coding—all fields of study are ultimately humanity's process of understanding the world, and it's participating in that historical process that has been passed down from our ancestors.
I think the idea that something has or doesn't have value just because an LLM exists is purely a capitalistic perspective. I sincerely question whether something that doesn't generate money in a capitalist sense is truly without value
The problem is that coding was sold as the pancea. If you were fired, "learn to code", if you're in prison, "learn to code", if you're in kindergarden, "learn to code".
Even in this article, it's talking about how it's a good way to learn math and formal thinking. Yea, as an application. If you want to learn math, learn some basic fundamentals tied specifically to math, and then come apply it to code.
Coding is like welding in that it's a useful skill, a craft unto itself, but also integral for modern day manufacturing that opens up a world of possibilities. You don't see welding being suggested as a form of excercise, or the ticket to being a multi-millionaire.
If you want to fully understand / contribute to / fully leverage the most powerful technology humanity has ever devised (AI), you must learn to read and write code. That’s the only reason anyone should need.
If the best we've got for convincing people to learn to code is that it's like math notation (the most hated part of math for the uninitiated), or pretty like a violin (useless for a new grad), then coding is in serious trouble.
IMO a better argument is it helps you "think like a computer". But if you wanted to learn that there are many video games I'd recommend mastering instead of learning to code. For most people "learn to code" is like telling programmers to "learn asm".
I think pieces like this miss the forest for the trees. Software is the bottleneck for a vast array of economic activities. Attention from intelligent people is most of the rest. Both are mostly-commoditized already and are just waiting around for technological diffusion and the closing of the RSI loop. Unless you're doing so as a hobby with no expectation of returns, I'm not sure what, if anything, is worth learning anymore.
I don't entirely disagree, but I absolutely hate these blog posts. They always miss the point entirely. It's been enough years of this that it seems like a deliberate muddying of waters.
"Knowing how to code" has always been poorly defined and full of silly arguments. Nobody employs code monkeys. What matters more is that you understand how things work. There's zero progress on that with AI. LLMs might even be negative progress on education.
Learning to code = understanding a problem, breaking it down into small, manageable pieces, putting all the pieces back together. Debugging. Iterating towards better metrics, etc.
All these are amazingly valuable skills/mindsets that can be highly portable to other "problem solving" domains.
To create things via AI without being able to comprehend the output is to trust completely in the agent(s). Operating that way is more optimistic than experience has taught me to be.
Anecdotally, the people who I know who were not particularly good developers pre-llms still manage to produce bad code even using flagship models now.
I think having solid knowledge/understanding of good architecture and general practices is still crucial, and it's easy to forget that the foundational knowledge and instinct you take for granted now actually took a lot of time and effort to learn when you were less experienced.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't AI agents replacing the coding mostly being done on the outer layers of development? I mean, end user applications, apps, dashboards, business applications? On this "outer crust" people can maybe tolerate things with 99% accuracy, or bloated code. A vibe coded app can be argued to be "good enough." (Even then, look at the disaster that Microsoft apps have become post AI adoption.)
But people are still staying away from LLMs on the critical compilers, frameworks, tools and libraries that people need to really rely on. No one wants to build on code that is 99% accurate or bloated. No one wants to use an AI coded web browser. To really build good building materials, you need to code it and know what you're doing. Where is anybody even getting close to phasing out coding in those critical areas?
Thin post with more ads for their company than arguments.
Many pursuits are worthwhile, yet almost no one does most pursuits. Coding is going to become a niche activity like portrait painting or making toys. It’s fun but there’s far cheaper easier ways to get a superior product.
The very fact we need to discuss that it's a sign that we lost and slop has won. Learning to code it's a journey that never ends, after almost 15+ years I feel like I still learn and that my code sucks, if I delegate everything to the slot machine I feel like I'm being retro actively turned into a junior, thanks but no thanks. I'll still use LLMs and Agents the best I can but coding is mine
As a professional programmer entering the final third of an enjoyable career, I would now place "learning to code" in the same category as "making a living as a poet." As in, it's truly enjoyable art and some people appreciate it, but you'd better plan for a day job.
Senior people who already know how to code are doing OKish for now, from the data I've seen, but the job is increasingly babysitting models like they were junior contributors.
Pro: In the last ten years backend development has turned into AWS SDK-orientied programming mostly. Databricks-oriented in case of data engineering recently too. Between this and python/js popularity it is more of unskilled labor now.
Contra: I'm reading digital circuits and introductory FPGA programming books this summer - fullstack development for the robotics dominated future here I come ;) Granted some EE classes in your old major will help. But modern digital circuits and embedded hardware space also have a lot of similarity to your muscle memory as a software developer.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 57.3 ms ] threadThe excuse that we don't need to know how things work because AI will take care of it is going to bite a lot of people on their asses
Abstractions always led to this sort of behavior. So many of my web development peers screamed at me for being curious about what happens behind/further down then the stack we were learning, and this was decades ago. Seems it differs a lot per person, and what I've found out only later, depending on the situation; nowadays I'm comfortable with both approaches of "this is below the abstraction I actually care about" and "No, I have to dive deeper to actually understand properly the abstraction level I'm at right now"
Something I'm trying to do right now is to build something and avoid using LLMs to write any code. I still use it to consult. I'm writing a Dota2 tournament match aggregator in Elixir that takes tournament streams and chronologically orders them in a format that makes it easier to watch them sequentially since I find YouTube hard to use for ingesting series of videos.
I'm building it because... I like programming. I like making things. I find that LLMs are making me intellectually lazy and making things with them feels unfulfilling. I want to build. It's human to want to build.
Anything a human feels is human, regardless if it's to build or to not build :) Some people prefer some ways of building, others in other ways, it's all fine. I think lots of people forget that programming is a heavily creative endeavor in the end.
If I wanted to be slightly controversial, I'd argue building a program is more like painting a painting than building a bridge, for better and worse.
And basically this is the problem I see in LLMs: they robbed me of these moments of enjoying the art of programming itself.
You are still free to enjoy it in your free time, just like I enjoy drawing or guitar playing in my free time. The loss we have experienced is the luxury of doing at work something we enjoy for its own sake.
Even in this article, it's talking about how it's a good way to learn math and formal thinking. Yea, as an application. If you want to learn math, learn some basic fundamentals tied specifically to math, and then come apply it to code.
Coding is like welding in that it's a useful skill, a craft unto itself, but also integral for modern day manufacturing that opens up a world of possibilities. You don't see welding being suggested as a form of excercise, or the ticket to being a multi-millionaire.
If the best we've got for convincing people to learn to code is that it's like math notation (the most hated part of math for the uninitiated), or pretty like a violin (useless for a new grad), then coding is in serious trouble.
IMO a better argument is it helps you "think like a computer". But if you wanted to learn that there are many video games I'd recommend mastering instead of learning to code. For most people "learn to code" is like telling programmers to "learn asm".
(I've been coding ~30 years)
"Knowing how to code" has always been poorly defined and full of silly arguments. Nobody employs code monkeys. What matters more is that you understand how things work. There's zero progress on that with AI. LLMs might even be negative progress on education.
All these are amazingly valuable skills/mindsets that can be highly portable to other "problem solving" domains.
The layperson may be able to get ahold of a spellbook, but without Understanding it comes with high risk of turning your niece into a frog.
Whereas Wizards can cast increasingly powerful spells that build on each other, and make Art.
I think having solid knowledge/understanding of good architecture and general practices is still crucial, and it's easy to forget that the foundational knowledge and instinct you take for granted now actually took a lot of time and effort to learn when you were less experienced.
But people are still staying away from LLMs on the critical compilers, frameworks, tools and libraries that people need to really rely on. No one wants to build on code that is 99% accurate or bloated. No one wants to use an AI coded web browser. To really build good building materials, you need to code it and know what you're doing. Where is anybody even getting close to phasing out coding in those critical areas?
Um no, you've gone too far.
Many pursuits are worthwhile, yet almost no one does most pursuits. Coding is going to become a niche activity like portrait painting or making toys. It’s fun but there’s far cheaper easier ways to get a superior product.
must be a Raku coder -Ofun
Senior people who already know how to code are doing OKish for now, from the data I've seen, but the job is increasingly babysitting models like they were junior contributors.
Contra: I'm reading digital circuits and introductory FPGA programming books this summer - fullstack development for the robotics dominated future here I come ;) Granted some EE classes in your old major will help. But modern digital circuits and embedded hardware space also have a lot of similarity to your muscle memory as a software developer.