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Ask HN: How much coding should beginners learn in the AI era?
51–60 of 73 posts
Re: Ask HN: How much coding should beginners learn in the AI era?
#52Using lightweight formal methods to verify models that the AI later builds.
Example is Forge: https://forge-fm.github.io/book/2026/
Another skill is conceptual design or figuring out how the user interface should work using a design method to identify logical problems because we will all still have to use software. This book and the tutorials are quite good at explaining why some software succeeds and others fail https://essenceofsoftware.com/tutorials/
Accurate cost models for running code are still going to be needed because all the architecture is going to change. Many schools teach algorithm engineering like MIT but the best examples I've found is this course https://15799.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2025/schedule.html
You now can design an interface to a system that someone like a paying client will enjoy using, design the hidden 'back end' of the system to be correct using formal methods, then derive an accurate cost model to see how it will run on whatever hardware we are using 5 years from now.
If I were going into school today I would take robotics as that's the next big field and will have research grants and money coming in. It will require the same skills of formal methods for 'cyber-physical safety' and new cost models.
Re: Ask HN: How much coding should beginners learn in the AI era?
#53On effective engineering teams, there's always at least one person who is fluent one layer below where the rest of the team operates. That person tends to be extraordinarily useful in tricky situations. Examples: someone who can read assembly on a team writing C; someone who spends a lot of time in the browser debugger on a frontend team; or someone who is comfortable stepping deep into third-party library code with…
Well put. The step to AI is a little like the step to using an IDE. It simplifies and automate a various bottlenecks. But when the IDE starts randomly failing, you need to call on that guy that knows how to work without the IDE.
which IDE are you using that randomly fails?
Re: Ask HN: How much coding should beginners learn in the AI era?
#54Enough to understand what the AI is generating and debug
when it goes wrong — which it will. The floor has dropped
significantly but the ceiling for those who understand the
fundamentals has gone up, not down.
Re: Ask HN: How much coding should beginners learn in the AI era?
#55[dead]
Re: Ask HN: How much coding should beginners learn in the AI era?
#56learn enough to understand what AI does wrong. that's the threshold you should consider.
ai definitely helps in speed but it also comes with bad decisions.
ultimately the ones who can review, debug & direct the AI will thrive
Re: Ask HN: How much coding should beginners learn in the AI era?
#57If you mean coding as an writing skill, it wouldn't be valuable I guess. But if you are saying all of skills or layers building smth with code, it would be still valuable. (I believe)
I'm not an expert in coding but trying to stay opened to learn everything about coding. Whenever I bump into smth not familiar I try to study with agent in top-down way.
This kind of state of mind gives me some relief that some where in future I would know quite a lot about coding and it would still valuable for myself.
Re: Ask HN: How much coding should beginners learn in the AI era?
#58Enough to read it, not necessarily to write it from scratch. The job is shifting from author to editor — but a bad editor who can't recognize a good sentence is useless. Same principle applies.
Re: Ask HN: How much coding should beginners learn in the AI era?
#59It is a very well opinionated topic and every answer here will tell you one or another story from personal experience, general guide and trends around AI. People will fear it, get fascinated by it and eventually accept the inevitable too.
Here's my take: If you plan on staying relevant, it's not about how good of a programmer you are or how fast you can type or how much code you can generate. That advantage is gone now. Even those fancy theoretical terms for solving actual problem and basic DSA is redundant nowadays. AI can do lot of code in a very short span. But that doesn't make it easier too. Next era of coders will require a skill that was never less important, how to solve a problem.
The reason is, AI doesn't know whole context of what you want until you describe it properly and since we are human, we will always miss one thing or another or something obvious. That being said, don't focus on being a great programmer since that advantage is gone now but still learn the basics. Do your job using AI while still learning how it's been done side by side since that knowledge will never go away. Eventually experience matters more than then tool whether done with AI or not.
Re: Ask HN: How much coding should beginners learn in the AI era?
#60All of it. AI is magnificent in hands of a skilled coder. And absolutely crap in hands of someone who has no clue how computers work.
Yep. There's a lot of room for error when you start by asking the wrong thing, then don't understand the output. I've seen prompts that were literally "fix it", then the LLM goes and changes assert status == 200 to 500. Tests pass now! Problem solved!
I've fixed builds from non-devs who used an LLM for everything and then wondered why outsiders could read what they thought was private. Speaks a lot to me :D