AI does not do it better. It just does it faster. Sometimes that is useful. Sometimes that is harmful. You would want to learn to code to be able to tell the difference.
I use coding assistants about 7 hrs a day in fields I know backwards and forwards and fields I know not at all.
Ai does NOT do better than a reasonable person. It gets about 80% of the way most of the time. And totally wrong and broken sometimes.
It just writes 10x faster. Once testing, bug fixing, testing again, and manually fixing the occasional huge fuck up im about 5x faster than I was. Things would be even better if I was a better programmer to begin with.
do what you enjoy and ride out the bubble,
remember, ai is only regurgitating and could never make another hubble,
you learn by working at the problems through struggle,
after enough work, you will no longer be a computing muggle.
- Like every muscle, doing it by yourself, develops your brain's thinking abilities.
- Yes, AI can do whatever the brain can do, but that doesn't develop it.
- What sets humans apart is the ability to think about a situation and do something about it. The ability to think sets us apart. That ability should be developed regardless of what AI can do.
- AI could be better. So what? Comparing yourself with others is the root of disappointment and dissatisfaction. Compare yourself with yourself. Are you better today than you were yesterday?
- Competing with AI is an ever losing battle. Don't compete with AI. Develelop yourself.
If you genuinely enjoy building, then I think you should just focus on building and not worry about the code. If you can get the results you want without caring, then just do that.
Anything you learn that has any value (which is very little these days) will soon become worthless as AI continues to improve.
If you're learning to code because you're a problem solver like myself, and you enjoy challenging your mind, then this isn't the field for you anymore.
I'm looking to retire soon because I feel like I have no professional purpose as SWE anymore. I used to enjoy building things, but I think that was because I liked the challenge of building things that were difficult, and I don't find any aspect of working with AI challenging really.
Even before you starting coding, just knowing how to do something complicated the right way used to be hard.
There are problems where if you can't figure out the math or don't know the algorithms in the field, then you basically cannot solve the problem. You don't even really know what you're looking for.
Today if you're trying to solve some complex scheduling problem you can just ask an AI and it might crap out a genetic algorithm, or if you need to align two objects in 3D space you can ask an AI and it will crap out an implementation of the Kabsch algorithm. You don't need to know how they work or the math behind them. You don't even need to know they exist.
I would hate for you to waste as much time as I have learning useless stuff.
Ask yourself why you want to learn to code, and pursue that in a more valuable way.
Why learn math when a calculator can do it? Why read a book if AI can summarise it? Why walk to the store if someone can deliver it?
There is no free lunch. The trade off is you get short term gains and long term cognitive dementia. You become a useless generalist.
AI does not do it better. It just does it faster. Sometimes that is useful. Sometimes that is harmful. You would want to learn to code to be able to tell the difference.
> AI does not do it better. It just does it faster.
Untrue for the majority of engineers, and almost all with less than a decade experience.
The AIs will only get better from here too.
I use coding assistants about 7 hrs a day in fields I know backwards and forwards and fields I know not at all.
Ai does NOT do better than a reasonable person. It gets about 80% of the way most of the time. And totally wrong and broken sometimes.
It just writes 10x faster. Once testing, bug fixing, testing again, and manually fixing the occasional huge fuck up im about 5x faster than I was. Things would be even better if I was a better programmer to begin with.
do what you enjoy and ride out the bubble, remember, ai is only regurgitating and could never make another hubble, you learn by working at the problems through struggle, after enough work, you will no longer be a computing muggle.
- Like every muscle, doing it by yourself, develops your brain's thinking abilities.
- Yes, AI can do whatever the brain can do, but that doesn't develop it.
- What sets humans apart is the ability to think about a situation and do something about it. The ability to think sets us apart. That ability should be developed regardless of what AI can do.
- AI could be better. So what? Comparing yourself with others is the root of disappointment and dissatisfaction. Compare yourself with yourself. Are you better today than you were yesterday?
- Competing with AI is an ever losing battle. Don't compete with AI. Develelop yourself.
If you genuinely enjoy building, then I think you should just focus on building and not worry about the code. If you can get the results you want without caring, then just do that.
Anything you learn that has any value (which is very little these days) will soon become worthless as AI continues to improve.
If you're learning to code because you're a problem solver like myself, and you enjoy challenging your mind, then this isn't the field for you anymore.
I'm looking to retire soon because I feel like I have no professional purpose as SWE anymore. I used to enjoy building things, but I think that was because I liked the challenge of building things that were difficult, and I don't find any aspect of working with AI challenging really.
Even before you starting coding, just knowing how to do something complicated the right way used to be hard.
There are problems where if you can't figure out the math or don't know the algorithms in the field, then you basically cannot solve the problem. You don't even really know what you're looking for.
Today if you're trying to solve some complex scheduling problem you can just ask an AI and it might crap out a genetic algorithm, or if you need to align two objects in 3D space you can ask an AI and it will crap out an implementation of the Kabsch algorithm. You don't need to know how they work or the math behind them. You don't even need to know they exist.
I would hate for you to waste as much time as I have learning useless stuff.
Ask yourself why you want to learn to code, and pursue that in a more valuable way.