this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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Is learning to code even valid anymore after generative AI?
I'd expect there to be a lot less space for jr programmers because of this.
Also, the interest in increasing the reserve army of labour on the tech industry. All around the world, especially the south hemisphere, there is neolib push for "learn to program". The 90'-00' classic "learn graphic design".
Not saying people should't follow jobs in tech (especially if the like it) but, with the busting bubble, is viable being a jr in the current year?
Speaking from my own experience. Absolutely yes it is valid, but perhaps not just "learning to code" for the sake of it with no specific direction or specialty in mind. Gone are the days where you can get a $100k/yr entry level job at "FAANG" by going through a 3 month Javascript boot camp (if those days ever existed, I wouldn't know because that was not my personal path).
Generative AI can certainly do some tasks more easily, but it makes a lot of mistakes/hallucinations, so it still requires a solid programmer to first be able to break down and articulate smaller pieces of a whole via prompts, and also to identify issues with the output and deal with them. Used as a tool (and nothing more), to write smaller pieces of code for a larger project it is quite powerful and speeds up development.
It however is not going to write your company's "secret sauce" proprietary business logic for you, or finish the whole project in one go. There are also still many specialties within comp sci generally that AI can't help with because they require a human touch.
The productivity bump of generative AI for programming is massively overblown. Whether or not the hype has hiring managers expecting junior devs to output twice the code in the same time as they would have been expected to 5 years ago is another issue.
There’s less space for juniors right now because the market blew up after all the free money dried up and now people graduating college are competing with people who worked at Facebook for a decade. Layoffs were no joke.