"Don't learn to code" is bad advice
@felipe_japm
·
Mar 28, 2025 (2 days)
- As if the learning alternatives people suggest aren't just basic common sense or generic project management skills.
- As if today's AI could flawlessly code on its own.
- As if people could predict the exact point in time that flawlessly, fully unsupervised AI will become a reality.
- As if the "learn to be creative" advice were some plug-and-play skill you could unlock by taking a course or reading a book—bam, instant Steve Jobs—instead of something cultivated through experiences and growth over time.
- As if the value of learning should be defined by what AI can’t do.
- As if problem-solving skills and algorithmic reasoning developed through coding don’t transfer to other domains.
- As if the only value in learning comes from mastering a specific skill rather than broadening your mind.
- As if learning isn’t a way to keep your brain active and healthy.
- As if the need to understand how systems work under the hood was some fresh revelation for engineers, and now AI has made that curiosity totally irrelevant.
- As if the best AI prompts aren’t written by people who know how to code.
- As if, in a pre-AI world, the best programmers you know weren't intrinsically motivated to learn low-level computer science just because they coded in a high-level language—and now that they code in English, that will change.
- As if the journey of learning isn’t valuable in itself.
- As if learning should only serve your employer’s needs.
- As if knowledge is only valuable when it leads to immediate financial gain.
- As if learning should be only extrinsically motivated.
- As if AI will totally stop advancing once it gets perfect at coding, so your shiny "new learned skill" is definitely safe for the next decade.
- As if you manage your time so perfectly that learning to code would steal precious hours from other learning - rather than, you know, eating into your Netflix or social media time.
- As if endlessly doom-scrolling through X, fueling your anxiety with predictions about the future while numbing your mind, is any better than pulling yourself together and learning something new.
- As if a CEO developing an AI solution would have a god-like, perfectly unbiased, and objective take on the future of human coding.
- As if delegating all your cognitive skills to AI won’t make your existence miserable.
- As if learning anything for a living will even matter once we reach the Singularity.