Mathematicians don’t skip past the basics and jump straight into differential equations just because we have calculators, nor do chefs eschew knife skills because we have food processors.

You can’t learn enough anyway so this is kind of like the beginner asking “would it look bad if I put on too much muscle?”

That aside, AI era is irrelevant for learning to program so far imo. But it is not possible to guess for 10 years.

I recommend starting something like freecodecamp and reading as many textbooks as possible (written by people that actually teach the subjects). Like the intro to programming book by Guttag

Also learning english well enough to be able to watch conference videos and read textbooks, if you don’t already know it.

Good ways to use AI are code review and finding bugs imo but both of these can be very harmful for learning.

Also would recommend only considering the opinions of people actually write code and earn a living by writing code. And mostly disregarding future projections from anyone.

Even with coding agents, I think beginners still benefit from learning enough to understand system behavior, debugging, and tradeoffs. In our experience, AI accelerates implementation, but understanding why something breaks remains extremely valuable. But I'll say in 5 years most coding work would be done by agents.

Learning computer science theory is probably going to be more important for the future than writing code yourself, because LLM coding is here to stay, and the human's job is going to be guiding the LLMs effectively: the AIs are writing code that pass tests, but how would you know that you are having the LLMs coding the right things?

Personally, I think learning specific implementation of algorithms probably should take less of a priority compared to fundamental architectural understanding why these things are done in the first place: data structure, automata theory, interpreter/compiler methodologies, etc. You still have to learn how to code, even if you won't be doing a lot of coding directly yourself, because the fastest way to learn how to evaluate code is by writing code yourself.

There's still a lot of value in learning to code here, even if AI becomes the norm at certain companies.

Remember, you want to be able to understand why your system isn't working as intended if the AI screws up. You want to be able to make changes yourself without relying on Claude or Codex to do everything.

And you especially want this given that these services are operating at a loss right now, and prices are steadily increasing. How long til some companies restrict usage to keep costs down? How many companies can afford to pay whatever these services ask for?

Ideally local models and systems would make things cheaper here, but the gulf between what's available there and through the larger providers is still pretty big, and the requirements for a good AI system are higher than many people can afford on their own.

Critical thinking is the highest value ability that a human can have. Synthesizing information is the next one. These go hand in hand. In an era where coding languages are being replaced by prompting you need to be the visionary that sees that future for you and the machines. In 10 years time brain interfaces will allow us to think through the machines and manually writing code will be a fun educational activity in the Science museum.

You don’t need to learn how to code if you’re not working on anything important & interesting. But you’ll be limited to what AI can do for you. If you need to solve problems where AI is weak, you’ll need the skills to do the work yourself.

A less obvious problem with not learning to code is that you’ll be less competitive because you don’t really have any specialized skills. Everyone can fire up Claude Code and knock out something. But if Claude Code gets stuck, or simply can’t solve your problem, then what will you do?

None. My company is hiring anyone who can use a computer and having them produce code via AI then review via AI and that is that. I was told to stop writing any code 6 months ago and haven't written a single line since. Not sure learning anything is worth it anymore, I'm shown every day at my company how they are replacing me directly and no longer have "devs" or "IT". They now call "IT", Digital Services and it can all be done by AI.

If you don't know how to code, you can't possibly supervise a coding agent. You'd have no way of knowing if the idioms it used are correct or bolted on from another technology in a weird way. You'd have no idea if there's a better way to do a task using features available in the standard library. You wouldn't know if you're using a hammer for a task that requires a screwdriver.

The same goes for learning your second programming language, and the third, and the fourth...

If you want to program you need to know enough to be compatible with the people who are already there. Historically hiring developers is just about putting bodies in seats.

If you want to be in management soft skills and written communication are more important, but you still have to know enough to call bullshit and ask questions other people are not comfortable asking.

That’s all you need to know.