Ask HN: How much coding should beginners learn in the AI era?

This is an interesting question, I just got a degree in Computer Science after 4 years of college, so here are my thoughts of someone who has some experience but not really that deep in the field: - I think coding itself isn't the valuable thing, but it's the ability to build things, problem solving through working with constraints, tradeoffs, and optimization, think about scaling something, and the mindset of always staying up to date. So no, coding isn't a valuable skill in the future, but the things that coding can teach you are especially if you want to go in to tech.

Here are the things I think you should learn: - Learn the basics: Choose 1 programming language (like: Python, Java, C++) to learn and understand general concepts in coding, getting use to the syntax. Next is the Data Structure and Algorithms, these concepts are more high level then plain coding and helps you write code that is more efficient with time and memory, and also applies to many fields later. - Learn common development tools like Git, Github, Linux, VS Code, Claude. - Learn about Software Development patterns, practices, processes. Pick at least 1 project that you want to build, and build it with some AI tools as the support, you'll learn a lot about building things, and whether you will want to get deeper in the field. Also learn about good coding practices and apply that to the project. Learn more from online platforms, discussions, tutorials, read documents. Take it slow while using AI to code, try to understand everything. And accept the AI code only when you get the lines. (Also don't expose environment keys lol) - I also think it's useful to understand all the nuances of what you can do, some people really like the low level stuffs (which is closer to hardware like machine architecture, Assembly, Robots) while some people like more high level (system design, architectural thinking) so what I would say is maybe pick 1-2 low level and high level thing that you might like and go with it. - After these things you can have a pretty good understanding of the field. Maybe you can go deep into a category after that(like AI/ML, ...) and think more about career wise if you are still interested.

I learnt and did coding between 1991 to 2002. After that I almost never learnt or practiced. But I know what exactly going on during the shift form desktop apps to web apps to multi tire apps to Hosted solutions to SaaS to whatever we are this day! My team of developers were doing coding, and I know what they can do and what they cannot do.

I trust this answer should help you to see through the answer.