Learning to code is still worthwhile • Hacker News Board

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#171

Post by alightsoul » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 6:45 AM UTC

david-gpu wrote: post #108

drTobiasFunke wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming that the amount of work is finite, so more productive people implies fewer people are required. Is that the case though? Has it ever been?

> You are assuming that the amount of work is finite, so more productive people implies fewer people are required. Is that the case though? Has it ever been? How many horse farriers have you met? How many coopers, blacksmiths, or shoemakers?

They absolutely still exist just not in the US. Bad comparison IHMO. What they make is just imported into the US and they often work in factories in low wage countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Cambodia. They were just offshored

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#172

Post by ozgrakkurt » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 6:46 AM UTC

ekidd wrote: post #65

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 we…

> from the data I've seen,

Where is the data? There is no data but a lot of vibes, from the data I have seen

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#173

Post by HNisCIS » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 6:46 AM UTC

Here's a much simpler reason: the output of an LLM, mathematically, is average. The code it writes is, effectively, the geometric mean of github. The ideas it comes up with are the geometric mean of wikipedia and reddit. Go ask it how to do something truly "out there" and watch it give you the most milquetoast reply you've ever seen. I asked Fable 5 to create a profitable business and the best it could come up with was:

>Sell an expensive, recurring B2B service into your network, fulfill it with technical leverage, then productize it into software once you've done the same work five times.

Yeah, good fucking work, nobody's ever thought of that. It's obvious why it picked that though, every 3rd post on this forum and half of the rest of the internet is singing the praises of be-your-own-boss SaaS passive income and it turns out that if you convolve all of that into a black box this is what you're gonna get.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#174

Post by alightsoul » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 6:48 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #73

ekidd wrote: post #65

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 we…

> 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. Not wrong. Probably. I'm reminded of an old friend from long ago. She was an early music major at Harvard, and graduated with a MFA. She was very good…

If I have learned something is that people in this field of work highly underestimate their skills. I still remember when people said gpt 3.5 was the end of programming and that I shouldn't pursue it. I am so glad I took the risk anyway. Although things are much brighter outside the us and Europe https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-report exactly the same countries where ai is mostly seen as unacceptable.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#175

Post by purple-leafy » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 6:57 AM UTC

avaer wrote: post #12

Those are not compelling arguments. 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 o…

“Sell me this pen”

Everyone in this thread is failing to sell the pen lol

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#176

Post by palmotea » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 7:06 AM UTC

gyulai wrote: post #163

I think that, even among those who have had the ability to code since before LLMs, the skill of coding has been in atrophy, and will continue to be so over the next 10 or 20 years. Learning to code, over the same period of time, will not be worthwhile. At the end of that process, cracks in the system will start to show: Namely, we will have nothing but LLM-generated code to train future LLMs on, and codebases for pro…

> ...and [1] codebases for production code will be so low in quality that they will be unintelligible to humans, and [2] LLMs, too, will have trouble maintaining them. [3] At that point, coding will become a valuable skill again.

You are a very optimistic person. IMHO, claims #1 & #2 will happen, but #3 won't. People, especially business leaders, will just adjust their expectations downwards (or be forced to do so).

Just think of how often some "new and improved version" drops some important feature you used without providing a good replacement? We'll get more of that. If the codebase is unmaintainable, they'll just regenerate a new pile of garbage that will change stuff randomly and call it an improvement.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#177

Post by simg » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 7:07 AM UTC

woodpanel wrote: post #149

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only true if it plateaus. What you are saying is “I don’t think LLMs will achieve superintelligence.” Which is a fine opinion to have, but it’s an opinion.

once, if ever, the plateauing happens. Until then there is going to be this gap. In other words, superintelligence often referred to as AGI might either be months away or just VC-Money induced cult-speak many fall victim to. It doesn’t matter because the only certainty is that it’s not here now, and neither tomorrow etc.

AGI is human level intelligence. superintelligence is ASI

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#178

Post by david_rugaex » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 7:09 AM UTC

HNisCIS wrote: post #167

infinitebit wrote: post #153

Does anyone here know any mathematicians who can’t do long division or basic algebra? Probably not, because they *don’t exist because learning basic math is necessary to learn higher level math*. Whether or not we have calculators to do basic math is irrelevant if you want to become a mathematician. I’d argue that “whether or not the average dev will be writing any code by hand in 5 years” is irrelevant to whether or…

I take the opposite view but to the same conclusion. I've heard the joke "the more advanced you get the worse you get at math" from a lot of mathematicians. I'd bet most mathematicians can't do a long division problem without having to think pretty hard about it, because they've long since moved past that skill. All that said, people still learn and do manual math at all levels in order to advance the field even thou…

I'm in the same boat! It's a reasonable stance but the specific examples aren't air tight. I'm a Mathematician and I can't do long division, I could probably work it out? Like you say, long division was part of a journey that made me very mathematically capable, even if it's no longer an active contributor. My capacity for pencil and paper calculus is undoubtably many many fold worse than my peak around undergraduate studies!

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#179

Post by palmotea » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 7:09 AM UTC

irjustin wrote: post #122

StilesCrisis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The babysitting work would still be impossible if you didn't actually know how to code.

For now, I can imagine a not too distant future where this is largely untrue. LLMs are an abstraction just like machine code -> assembly -> C/JVM -> some lang -> LLMs? At some point you stopped needing to understand the layer down because the layer you were on became so good. Yes there are always corner cases, but for the vast majority of developers/engineers out there, staying at your layer was enough to make a care…

> LLMs are an abstraction just like machine code -> assembly -> C/JVM -> some lang -> LLMs?

People keep trying to make that analogy, but it doesn't really work because LLMs aren't deterministic like compilers and assemblers.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#180

Post by cryptonym » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 7:09 AM UTC

gyulai wrote: post #163

I think that, even among those who have had the ability to code since before LLMs, the skill of coding has been in atrophy, and will continue to be so over the next 10 or 20 years. Learning to code, over the same period of time, will not be worthwhile. At the end of that process, cracks in the system will start to show: Namely, we will have nothing but LLM-generated code to train future LLMs on, and codebases for pro…

Part of the industry always seek humans able to code with deep understanding. AI is fast but always lacks depth, works better if you are able to pilot it with your knowledge. If that changes, learning code becomes useless. If you learn code with limited depth (nextjs bros), this is already useless.