Learning to code is still worthwhile • Hacker News Board

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#211

Post by mewpmewp2 » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:20 AM UTC

weatherlite wrote: post #207

palmotea wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...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. Most production systems dont have such a high tolerance for embarrassing bugs. Startups can completely fail if they have…

Having worked at a company with thousands of microservices, I feel like most of it is just a bunch of boilerplate riddled with tons of ridiculous business logic, security and otherwise bugs. It seems like people were historically more concerned about Java inheritance and spreading everything around different files and directory hierarchies, while ignoring common sense business requirements completely. With each service being on separate older version, many being very difficult to start up locally, I don't see how LLMs could do worse than that, and that is a profitable, working business.

Funnily enough AI is the one discovering all those glaring issues now, and everyone is overwhelmed with getting it fixed. You could allow AI to attempt fixing it, but even though all of it was human written it is still hard to review, and even locally spin up or test because no one any more knows the true business requirements as people have rotated etc, so it's a nightmare.

The code on the first sight looks good, but what could be a simple config map, is spread out abstraction that is impossible to understand. Think just massive amounts of boilerplate to make a proxy call to another microservice etc.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#212

Post by kuboble » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:22 AM UTC

gyulai wrote: post #193

kuboble wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in order to be a productive programmer with Claude you still need to understand what you are doing. Learning to code is a must. You need to know what is possible or easy to know how much you can ask. What will be less important is to keep your sword sharp. I notice that if code less for some time I do more one-off errors, copy/paste mistakes etc. With llm keeping the coding skill warm is less important but I…

To be clear: I don't envision a scenario where people who are completely unable to code will come out of nowhere, and make a career out of prompting claude to write software without ever learning to code. What I am saying is that the threshold of what constitutes "good enough" coding skill has shifted down, and those people who already knew how to code now have a certain multiplier on the outcomes they deliver. (this…

> make the proposition of learning to code right now uneconomical

I disagree with this part. The bar of skill you need to write complex now is much lower now, so a new person might very quickly learn just enough to be able to build cool products.

Maybe not operating systems, but useful web apps, browser plugins, productivity tools, programs that solve business needs outside of IT, ETC.

Edit; but if you mean learning to code with the purpose of finding a job as a programmer then I'm more willing to agree.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#213

Post by globular-toast » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:28 AM UTC

bees_buzz wrote: post #199

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'm not anymore, but I used to be a research mathematician. I absolutely cannot remember how to do long division, though I was certainly competent at it at one point. I'm also terrible at mental arithmetic these days. These things were still indispensable on my path to being a mathematician though, they just ceased to be relevant as abstraction increased.

I feel like "I can do X" always comes with an implied timescale and a degree of confidence. For example, I "can" speak Chinese, in the sense that I have no reason to believe I cannot: Chinese people do not have fundamentally different mouths or brains to me. But still, even after many years of study and practice, you might be disappointed in my ability. If I were you I would not have any confidence in my ability in Chinese.

On the other hand, if I were to hire you to perform long division I would have complete confidence in you turning in your first calculation within an hour given your research background. So I would definitely say you can do long division.

If software were a purely mechanistic task like long division then I'd have confidence in anyone being able to turn out working code within an hour too. But we can't just keep turning out new programs every time we want to change them. Even with LLMs this is prohibitively expensive. So software is really about being able to build things and maintain them over time which requires a much deeper understanding. Long division is like snakes and ladders. Software is like chess.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#214

Post by zingar » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:31 AM UTC

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #211

weatherlite wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Most production systems dont have such a high tolerance for embarrassing bugs. Startups can completely fail if they have…

Having worked at a company with thousands of microservices, I feel like most of it is just a bunch of boilerplate riddled with tons of ridiculous business logic, security and otherwise bugs. It seems like people were historically more concerned about Java inheritance and spreading everything around different files and directory hierarchies, while ignoring common sense business requirements completely. With each servi…

The 1500 line react component that my unsupervised agentic coding side project produced says that it can get worse than we have now.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#215

Post by fgdfgddfggd » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:33 AM UTC

taybin wrote: post #120

> Code is a beautiful form of creative expression, as rich as literature or music I think this is overstating it and makes me wonder how familiar the author is with literature and music. Most programming is closer to plumbing. We come in, gripe about the guy who did the prior job, and solve a puzzle with some unique constraints. The reason LLMs are good at coding is because with coding we want boring, banal code.

Programming as in forming structures of computation is exceedingly beautiful and as intricate as any art, but that's indeed far, far removed from the everyday reality of a programmer.

I'd say the two are as connected as Rembrandt and painting prefab homes' walls are.

Most programmers are in denial about this and think their job is a delicate flower full of undiscovered mathematical gems. Meanwhile all they do is transforming data from and to databases, but refuse to see the general pattern so they'll create the same system over and over and over again in just about any variation possible.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#216

Post by david-gpu » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:37 AM UTC

alightsoul wrote: post #171

david-gpu wrote: post #108

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? 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

> They absolutely still exist

That is precisely the point. They still exist, but it is a far less common occupation than it once was.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#217

Post by DrewADesign » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:52 AM UTC

patch_dev wrote: post #105

DrewADesign wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but if things progress as they promised, it will require far fewer people to do the same work, which means the industry already has all the people it so need for at least a couple decades. That’s what happened with tool and die guys when offshoring kicked off, and now they’re scrambling to get apprentices because the last of the OG ones are retiring. There were decades that pretty much nobody (relative to prio…

You're making an assumption on what AI lab have promised? The same AI labs that have made a strategy out of lying for hype? Thats crazy man, regardless of whether anything else you're saying is valid.

That’s why I said “if” and not “when.”

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#218

Post by _glass » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:55 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…

It is a bit like in "Profession" by Isaac Asimov. We will still have the need for some people who will write code manually, fix the craft. We will need the "Feeble Minded" asylum that is actually a secret sanctuary for society's true creators. Because everyone else relies on generated code, they can only repeat what is already known. Only the people who learn the hard way through actual studying possess the creativity and intelligence required to invent new knowledge and create new educational tapes.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#219

Post by mewpmewp2 » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 9:58 AM UTC

zingar wrote: post #214

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked at a company with thousands of microservices, I feel like most of it is just a bunch of boilerplate riddled with tons of ridiculous business logic, security and otherwise bugs. It seems like people were historically more concerned about Java inheritance and spreading everything around different files and directory hierarchies, while ignoring common sense business requirements completely. With each servi…

The 1500 line react component that my unsupervised agentic coding side project produced says that it can get worse than we have now.

I swear I see far worse from humans for working businesses, and in much worse ways than just duplication of code. At least AI tends to be smarter about React intricacies even if it does create huge files. For my personal projects however I have straight token limits per file, whether it is backend or frontend so AI can't do that many lines of code. And I have specifically token limits so it would avoid hacking with formatting. And for React specifically I force it to put hooks in separate files and component files to be presentational only with max 1 hook usage.

Re: Learning to code is still worthwhile

#220

Post by DrewADesign » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 10:01 AM UTC

drTobiasFunke wrote: post #117

david-gpu wrote: post #108

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? How many horse farriers have you met? How many coopers, blacksmiths, or shoemakers?

Not a fair comparison. Unlike shoemaker or coopers who do ONE thing, a SWE doesnt do just one thing.. atleast in general. I churned through basic, logo, c, c++, java, c#, python, go and now agents. The executable building on single machine died when distributed systems came in. It again evolved when cloud took over. We have been reinventing our work every few years. Every job change requires us to learn new skills. H…

No profession uses only one skill. I’ve had a few, the longest-running as a developer, and there is nothing uniquely varied about working in software. One thing that is pretty unique to software is how superior they feel to most other professionals, when in reality, it’s a pretty mediocre discipline compared to electrical or mechanical engineering, medicine, chemistry…

Cobblers design, make and repair shoes of various kinds, boots for various purposes, slippers and moccasins with leather, cloth, rubber, and many kinds of threads using punches, knives, various machines, glues…

How much does a developer need to learn about their core competency when switching employers? Not even close to as much as a machinist. It’s not a useful comparison.