Felipe Jordão A.P Mattosinho

"Don't learn to code" is bad advice

Mar 28, 2025 (2 days)
  1. As if the learning alternatives people suggest aren't just basic common sense or generic project management skills.
  2. As if today's AI could flawlessly code on its own.
  3. As if people could predict the exact point in time that flawlessly, fully unsupervised AI will become a reality.
  4. 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.
  5. As if the value of learning should be defined by what AI can’t do.
  6. As if problem-solving skills and algorithmic reasoning developed through coding don’t transfer to other domains.
  7. As if the only value in learning comes from mastering a specific skill rather than broadening your mind.
  8. As if learning isn’t a way to keep your brain active and healthy.
  9. 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.
  10. As if the best AI prompts aren’t written by people who know how to code.
  11. 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.
  12. As if the journey of learning isn’t valuable in itself.
  13. As if learning should only serve your employer’s needs.
  14. As if knowledge is only valuable when it leads to immediate financial gain.
  15. As if learning should be only extrinsically motivated.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. As if a CEO developing an AI solution would have a god-like, perfectly unbiased, and objective take on the future of human coding.
  20. As if delegating all your cognitive skills to AI won’t make your existence miserable.
  21. As if learning anything for a living will even matter once we reach the Singularity.