"Should students still study computer science if AIs will write most code? ... even if you have AIs writing all your code for you, you're still in the position of an engineering manager, and good engineering managers should be able to do the work of those working for them."
Paul Graham. August 2026
https://paulgraham.com/prepare.html
I think that argument makes a lot of sense and coincides with my experience. I code all my projects, and I only use AI as a teacher, or bug finder. Again and again I see AI giving me a complicated, confusing code for something that could be much simpler, cleaner and organized. If I let AI write code I do not completely understand, sooner than later it all becomes a great mess that not even that AI can understand.
Still there are a lot of people who say that learning to code is not necessary. What do you think
- Should we learn to code?
- If you already know how to code, do you keep learning?
- What are your experiences?
Yes, I think people should still learn to code. Why? Well, a few reasons really:
First, if the AI is unavailable, you at least have a backup plan. You can make changes to your website or web app even if Claude or Codex or whatever else is available. That's useful if you're using third party services.
Secondly, it lets you delve into the code and understand where things have gone wrong if the agent gets stuck in a loop or keeps making poor decisions. If you let the AI handle everything, then you're up a creek without a paddle if said AI gets stuck and can't make any progress.
Finally, it's sometimes quicker and more efficient to make a change without using AI, especially if it's a small scale one. Lots of times I've wanted to add a new form field or tweak some random CSS rule, and being able to do that myself made things a lot quicker.
You say it better than be. This is my experience also. What surprises me is that I see so many important "coders" saying things like "I have stop coding, AI is doing it all" They will lose control of the code and forget how to do it well.
I'm going to age myself real-bad here, but I remember back when RAD ("Rapid Application Development") was the hotness of the 90s. Microsoft Access, Visual Basic (6), and even web-development itself (e.g. PHP/Wordpress).
People today likely cannot relate, but a big concern back then was identical: If the non-tech users can write their own code/and or code is easier to write, why even learn to be a programmer? What's the point?
It seems absurd now but legitimately it was exactly the same stuff. Like then, programmers will fall into two camps, those that keep up and those that fall behind. The thing with LLMs (and agentic) is that it doesn't change WHAT we do but rather HOW we do it.
So will programmers exist in the early 2000s after RAD? Well turns out, yes, and in expanded numbers. Businesses just expected more from technology, and the personnel gap never really closed. With LLMs the same will likely happen - same number of people, higher expectation.
The limit on how many programmers they'd hire was never "wants." They always wanted more than they could get. The limit was budgets/money. Now more "wants" can be fulfilled (just like post-RAD/web), but the budgets are more or less similar.
PS - Although it should be noted that the economy is not in a good place currently, and we're seeing an unusual employment environment. A lot of which "AI" is blamed on, least of all because companies can save face that way.
If your goal is making small apps, websites, things that aren't too critical performance-wise, I don't think you should learn to code.
But code isn't disappearing. Calculation-heavy processes, large apps, video games, basically things that need a deep understanding of tradeoffs, still require a lot of human inputs.
Will it be always that way, I don't know. But I'd like to think AI won't totally kill the code, in the same way compilers didn't kill assembly dev.
"Should students still study computer science if AIs will write most code? ... even if you have AIs writing all your code for you, you're still in the position of an engineering manager, and good engineering managers should be able to do the work of those working for them."
Paul Graham. August 2026 https://paulgraham.com/prepare.html
I think that argument makes a lot of sense and coincides with my experience. I code all my projects, and I only use AI as a teacher, or bug finder. Again and again I see AI giving me a complicated, confusing code for something that could be much simpler, cleaner and organized. If I let AI write code I do not completely understand, sooner than later it all becomes a great mess that not even that AI can understand.
Still there are a lot of people who say that learning to code is not necessary. What do you think - Should we learn to code? - If you already know how to code, do you keep learning? - What are your experiences?
Yes, I think people should still learn to code. Why? Well, a few reasons really:
First, if the AI is unavailable, you at least have a backup plan. You can make changes to your website or web app even if Claude or Codex or whatever else is available. That's useful if you're using third party services.
Secondly, it lets you delve into the code and understand where things have gone wrong if the agent gets stuck in a loop or keeps making poor decisions. If you let the AI handle everything, then you're up a creek without a paddle if said AI gets stuck and can't make any progress.
Finally, it's sometimes quicker and more efficient to make a change without using AI, especially if it's a small scale one. Lots of times I've wanted to add a new form field or tweak some random CSS rule, and being able to do that myself made things a lot quicker.
You say it better than be. This is my experience also. What surprises me is that I see so many important "coders" saying things like "I have stop coding, AI is doing it all" They will lose control of the code and forget how to do it well.
I'm going to age myself real-bad here, but I remember back when RAD ("Rapid Application Development") was the hotness of the 90s. Microsoft Access, Visual Basic (6), and even web-development itself (e.g. PHP/Wordpress).
People today likely cannot relate, but a big concern back then was identical: If the non-tech users can write their own code/and or code is easier to write, why even learn to be a programmer? What's the point?
It seems absurd now but legitimately it was exactly the same stuff. Like then, programmers will fall into two camps, those that keep up and those that fall behind. The thing with LLMs (and agentic) is that it doesn't change WHAT we do but rather HOW we do it.
So will programmers exist in the early 2000s after RAD? Well turns out, yes, and in expanded numbers. Businesses just expected more from technology, and the personnel gap never really closed. With LLMs the same will likely happen - same number of people, higher expectation.
The limit on how many programmers they'd hire was never "wants." They always wanted more than they could get. The limit was budgets/money. Now more "wants" can be fulfilled (just like post-RAD/web), but the budgets are more or less similar.
PS - Although it should be noted that the economy is not in a good place currently, and we're seeing an unusual employment environment. A lot of which "AI" is blamed on, least of all because companies can save face that way.
It depends.
If your goal is making small apps, websites, things that aren't too critical performance-wise, I don't think you should learn to code.
But code isn't disappearing. Calculation-heavy processes, large apps, video games, basically things that need a deep understanding of tradeoffs, still require a lot of human inputs.
Will it be always that way, I don't know. But I'd like to think AI won't totally kill the code, in the same way compilers didn't kill assembly dev.