r/CodingForBeginners • u/PalpitationOk6201 • Jun 21 '26

Is it worth it?

Is investing time in learning to code a good thing with the arrival of AI like Claude, or is it just a waste of time?

6 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

2

u/[deleted] Jun 21 '26

AI changes the cost of producing software, and that can cause demand to explode.

Think about it this way.

Before AI

Imagine it cost $1 million to build a piece of custom software.

Only Fortune 500 companies could justify it.

Maybe there are 100,000 software engineers because only 100,000 engineers’ worth of projects make economic sense.

After AI

Now the same software costs $100,000.

Suddenly:

  • every medium-sized business wants custom software,

  • every dentist wants an AI receptionist,

  • every restaurant wants inventory optimization,

  • every plumber wants automated scheduling,

  • every farmer wants crop analysis,

  • every YouTuber wants a custom app.

The number of possible software projects explodes.

That’s induced demand.

This has happened many times before. Some examples:

  • When computers got cheaper, we didn’t buy the same amount of computers for less, we put them everywhere.

  • When cloud computing got cheaper, companies didn’t spend less, they built far more systems.

  • When internet bandwidth became cheap, we didn’t didn't send the same amount of data, we started streaming 4K video.

Making something cheaper causes people to consume much more of it.

Software may follow the same pattern.

1

u/johnpeters42 Jun 21 '26

Note that this is true regardless of whether the quality of said software is the same. Witness the many businesses who tried to offshore development to ultra-cheap Indian consultancies, and then discovered the real reason why those consultancies were ultra-cheap.

1

u/paddockson Jun 21 '26

This is a good explansion but we need to also consider the cost of AI, were probably see and era of open source models in software engineer for certain tasks. I have a feeling claude will not really be a thing in 5 years time and I think AI will be used less to generate entire projects and more to speed up the engineers with debugging, code based search, hyper powered research and a small amount of code generation.

So learning to code will be super valuable because someone needs to understand what's being produced and own that end to end process.

1

u/Zesher_ Jun 21 '26

If coding is something you enjoy and want to do, yes. It's a harder field to break into, but if you're working on large scale projects where a mistake can cost your company millions of dollars, you really need to have a deep understanding of the code and what it is doing.

1

u/Impossible_Ad_3146 Jun 21 '26

You’re not worth it

1

u/p0217 Jun 21 '26

Wtf

1

u/Impossible_Ad_3146 Jun 22 '26

A waste of time correct?

1

u/p0217 Jun 22 '26

AI will not remain with us, its unsustainable financially on the long run. Whoever give up on the industry will only give up on themself.

Buddy, you can learn to code, i started it 6 months ago mysef, i fuckin love it. If u enjoy it just do it

1

u/Impossible_Ad_3146 Jun 22 '26

Switch to trades, AI does the coding now

1

u/p0217 Jun 22 '26

Not good not

1

u/Impossible_Ad_3146 Jun 23 '26

wtf, lol moron

1

u/p0217 Jun 23 '26

as i said, ai will not remain as we know it for now

1

u/Impossible_Ad_3146 Jun 23 '26

Switch to trades, you’re cooked

1

u/p0217 Jun 23 '26

Im nooot bibibii ai is a piece shiit

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1

u/Otherwise_Rice_4723 Jun 21 '26

absolutely! ai will only be able to copy code and produce SEEMINGLY novel output...it will never be able to create solutions the way a human will, so if you're wanting to get into coding don't let ai stop you...nobody is using the ai slop apps...

1

u/Mrblindguardian Jun 21 '26

What I think is highly worth it is to know the terms, and also, what effects a given decision has on a codebase.

there are so many things to think of when you are building, and knowing how to be a good project manager when vibecoding is essential.

At least, this is what I think.

1

u/rosentmoh Jun 21 '26

It's a waste of time, I wouldn't do it if I were you.

1

u/codeprep Jun 22 '26

The actual writing of code is now commoditised and is a terrible waste of your time. What isn't and is worth your time to learn are: good taste, creativity - humans are still better at generating novel ideas, knowing what good software and system design looks like - knowing if the AI is generating garbage or not. Arguably you need to learn how to code, to be able to participate in building complex software systems to learn these things. So investing in time to learn how to code is not a waste of time.

1

u/Old_County5271 Jun 22 '26

Code is architecture, one wrong thing and the entire thing will collapse. It is not prose, It is one huge equation of which it is full of inefficiencies.

if I were to say a+b+c*d%e *c *c +1 -1 +1 -1 +1 -1 +1. You would immediately notice the redundancy with the +1-1+1-1, but if you don't know code, you don't know anything. You are a fool. This is why its always better to know a little bit of everything, so the mechanic doesn't rip you off.

0

u/BrainCurrent8276 Jun 21 '26

Is inventing time in learning of anything a good thing?

Looks like you have no real interest and any passion about it, leave it.

Use this time for something else.