Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: Y Combinator founder Paul Graham took to Twitter last week to bemoan people who don’t learn to code using AI and other excuses. “A generation ago, some people said there was no point in learning programming because all programming jobs would be outsourced to India,” Graham wrote. “Now people say you don’t need to because AI will do everything for you. If you don’t want to learn programming, you can always find a reason.”
Bloomtech Coding Bootcamp CEO Austin Allred this week further highlighted Graham’s tweet, giving his own history on the excuses people have for not learning to code… There is this.
“You don’t have to learn to code. Soon the GUI will do it all for you.” — 1985
“You don’t have to learn to code. Soon it will all be done offshore for a penny.” — 2003
“You don’t have to learn to code. Soon the nocode tool will do it all for you.” — 2015
“You don’t have to learn to code, AI will do it all for you in no time.” — 2023
Among the many who retweeted Allred’s warning message was Code.org, a tech-assistance nonprofit that aims to make computer science a high school graduation requirement by 2030, and whose CEO is also People replied to Graham with a reassuring tweet suggesting the days he could avoid learning. Coding is almost over. Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi explained, “Currently, 27 states require computer science to be taught in all schools, and seven states require CS courses for high school graduation.” , said, “This argument is basically in our favor. Computer science has won.”
Related to that, this month ACM communicationa CS professor shared an opinion contrary to his own about the possibility of professional programmers using AI assistants to do a better job.
“It doesn’t work.”
I want an assistant who watches over me, warns me of pitfalls, and corrects my mistakes. Competent pair programmer. But that’s not what I get. Rather, I am the equivalent of a cocky graduate student, smart and widely read, polite and quick to apologize, but thoroughly always sloppy and unreliable. What seems to me to be such help is of little use…
As tempting as it is, AI assistants are not the product of logic. They are works of words.big language Model: Someone who speaks smoothly (like someone who got all the dates in high school). They have become incredibly good at creating text that looks right. This is sufficient for many applications. Not for programming.
