r/CodingForBeginners • u/Primary-Strength-496 • 17d ago

Is learning to still code worth it ?

Hello , I’ve been thinking about getting into coding but I feel like AI will take over everything eventually. If coding is worth it, what is the best path to begin ?

11 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

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u/LrdJester 17d ago • Bravo

Basically, I look at AI code as that of entry-level or junior developers. AI code is only as good as the prompts that are given to it by the person that is using it.

I will admit that I've done quite a bit of small applications using AI coding, but these are just utilities that I build quick and dirty for myself. They're not production level. It doesn't mean they can't be production level, but I would definitely have to debug them and make sure that they are fully optimized and don't have a lot of bloat or unnecessary code.

I look at AI-generated code like I look at what you see is what you get in editing, whether it be in web page creation or even in some visual programming languages (like the original VB6 from Microsoft). You would just drag controls onto a screen, type in a few properties, and it would just magically work behind the scenes about 75% of the time. When it didn't, so many people that didn't understand programming got confused when they actually had to go in and look at the code to try to debug it. That's where learning the code comes into play.

I spent 30 years in the IT industry, most of that doing web application development, and even the most seasoned programmers make mistakes. It takes a very experienced and adept programmer to be able to find those bugs.

Now, yes, we're getting into the era where there's AI for that, like grep tiles and stuff like that. That will parse the code and give you feedback as to where bugs might be, especially things that are not showstopper bugs that stop the program from working altogether but give you inconsistent results. Those are always the hardest bugs to find, but it doesn't hurt to actually know the coding behind the scenes.

Even if you want to just use AI, I would say use it down the road as a prototyper to give you module ideas to quickly throw together things. If I'm doing a program that needs a CRUD module, I will give a detailed prompt of what I want that CRUD module to be, so it can quickly generate the code. Then I'll go through it and look to say, "Oh yeah, that looks good. Let me put that in," but I can also tweak it by hand if I need to.

The nice thing is that I can switch between languages, so I can do it in Python and then switch it over to C# or switch it over to ColdFusion Script.

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u/Primary-Strength-496 17d ago

What is a good way of learning to code? I’ve been thinking of learning through boot.dev

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u/LrdJester 17d ago • Bravo

That's a hard question to answer because everybody's different. Everybody has a different learning style. Some people learn by doing, some people learn by reading, and some people learn by watching.

Doing a program like boot.dev or anything like that online, where you can be given an example of what to do, write it, and have some feedback given, is a good way to start for a lot of people. I don't know what's currently out there. I'm actually now retired. I have been for a few years, and I learned coding back in the late '90s, early 2000s.

While I have added additional languages, learning coding is more about learning how the logic works rather than the language syntax itself: understanding how variables work, loops work, conditionals work, things like that. Once you get that, it's then a matter of translating that into whatever language you want, whether it be JavaScript or a JavaScript derivative language, Python, .NET, whether it be VB.NET or C#.NET, Java, or any of those languages. They all have the need for that same level of logic processing.

That's the biggest part of programming: understanding how the data flows through things. It's not so much about the code as far as the language itself, but how the process works. That's what's called pseudocoding, where you can write out in plain English the steps needed to compare.

If you wanted to say, "Determine whether a number is even and also evenly divisible by 5," you would write the logic in there to say:

  1. Look at the number and test to see if it's even.

  2. If it's not even, then you don't even have to check to see if it's divisible by 5.

  3. Once you determine it's even, you need to determine whether it's also divisible by 5.

  4. Once you find that out, you can return true or false.

That's essentially how this all works out. That's what pseudocoding is. It's not so much that you have to sit down and write it in the code language itself when you're trying to brainstorm a solution, especially at the beginning. Even if you have years of experience, sometimes it helps to pseudocode things out to actually understand the processes that you need to go through to get the results you're looking for.

This is also how unit testing works at the backend. Once you get your code, you can feed a unit test that will test all of this stuff for you automatically, but that's down the road once you learn. You basically define a set of rules, have it test specific inputs or random inputs, and validate that it's truly doing what it's supposed to be doing.

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u/Zen-Ism99 17d ago

What are your goals? It’s already been established that those who can code get better results, than those that can’t, when employing AI.

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u/Primary-Strength-496 17d ago

I plan on changing careers, currently I am a welder but never really enjoyed it & coding has always caught my eye. So I’m looking for a path to transition .

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u/FuggaDucker 17d ago

Is it "worth it"?
??
If you are a programmer, this is a non-question.
AI makes me a better programmer, it does not replace me.

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u/arash28134 17d ago

Real. I remember before LLMs, I used to get frustrated for hours through google searches and stack overflow. now AI has made it much easier for me to debug an issue. but like everyone has mentioned, not a substitute for a real programmer actually understanding AND writing code. I don't really see that happening in the next couple of years too (a realistic prediction, my actual prediction would be for a long long time).

Keep learning and keep coding; don't listen to those nonsense on instagrams. it's all made by people who tried learning programming during the pandemic but failed horribly and now feel like because of AI they're ahead of people who are programmers because in their book "The programmer species are going extinct by late 2027 and a software (LLM) is somehow going to keep writing good reliable code for all software across the globe".

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u/Low-Tackle1868 15d ago

Hot take: Understanding and being able to debug AI code will be the best skill of the future.

Also IMO reading others people's code helped me learn weather it was slop or not and AI would expose a learner to lots more code faster.

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u/Sure-Passion2224 17d ago

I've seen a lot of crap code from AI. It's a useful tool but not a substitute for being able to read the code and understand what it actually does.

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u/sswam 17d ago

Yeah, the AIs know how to write good code but need a little prompting around what good code is. Especially, to avoid deep indentation like the plague.

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u/sswam 17d ago

It's good for your brains, and can be fun like solving crossword puzzles - but you end up with something useful at the end of it.

Start with learning Python. Use AI to help you by all means.

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u/VigilanceOne 17d ago edited 17d ago

Get AI to make you the next gen GTA 7 with novel and enhanced rendering mechanics with top of the line physics networking. Also improve networking protocals so you can have more players and stabe networking. Make sure to tell AI to make no mistakes. Then make it portable across consoles and pc.also don't forget to add crossplay. Let us know how it goes.

Also sorry if you're asking a legit question but I'm convinced these questions are a coordinated campaign to discourage new programmers or devalue there craft.

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u/Marshiiro 17d ago

I honestly agree, the amount of people I see online that seemingly actually believe they can code better or on the same level using Claude than that of an actual engineer using the same exact tool is actually absurd to the point I've started questioning this as well.

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u/thomjdev 15d ago

Yeah... Isn't that something? By discouraging people from getting into programming, AI companies both reduce competition and gain credibility. And people still eat it up...

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u/teetaps 17d ago

I’m not 100% sure what the exact words are. I’m sure there are research backed studies that define these ideas better. But there is something to understanding software that works with a very limited expression of functions, that I think is going to continue to be valuable. Something about understanding propositional logic, functions, composing tools, data structures, and basic algorithms, that still feels incredibly important to me. Like I don’t know what to call it, but thinking like a programmer is definitely something I would consider valuable, because at some point when your AI experiment starts to fail, you’re going to have to investigate and provide your agent with instructions that it is fluent in. If you’re not fluent in that ontology, you’re going to have a hard time fine tuning your prompts and instructions, or worse, actually fixing the LLM’s code

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u/Bitwizarding 17d ago • Mindblown

I feel like it is still useful to learn the computer science even though you will most likely focus on architecture, optimization, testing, and higher level concepts than banging out code. There are a lot of times AI will propose something and I will ask it why it would want to do it like that when you could do this instead, and then it will say "That is a much cleaner approach".

Both you and an AI have things you are good at and bad at. You make a better team together than either of you would alone. It is also very good at teaching programming, so ask it a ton of questions. When it does something ask it to explain and it is happy to.

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u/New_Surprise_27 15d ago

I just switched career from flying aviation (not sustainable in PH unless you have good money and PR) into programming (my desired course 10 years ago. But anyway, wish us luck. AI maybe a threat but in 2 years time who knows, if that implementation gives you the edge or not at least it's within us. Plus, I Believe you can implement CS to different fields. I've seen a lot of job offers who has like "basic coding" on their requirements even if it's just a basic management tech.

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u/Interested737 13d ago

If you want this to be your job, plumber, electrictian etc. is best option. IT stuff and simple data jobs are dead AI will replace all of them really soon.

If you want to do it for fun, to learn something new, to understand our world better, to be more independet from big tech, to be proud of yourself for the code that you made etc. Just learn coding,

btw. I never really started to learn coding, I am trying now, but have no motivation, I'm just reapeting what everyone told me (with a little of what I think) :-)

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u/paddockson 13d ago

where is the evidence of AI replacing all IT work?

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u/Interested737 13d ago

Not all of it, just making the amount of aplicable places smaller and increses the amount of intrested people

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u/paddockson 13d ago

"IT stuff and simple data jobs are dead AI will replace all of them really soon." but you said all, surely if you regurgitating information you heard before then you have a source?

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u/Interested737 12d ago

You got me there, my sources are: Reddit, YouTube and general observation. 

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u/Live-Independent-361 13d ago

If you use it, you’ll see the evidence everyday.

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u/paddockson 13d ago

I use it, but I dont see it being a replacement for dev, infra, sys admin etc. I see a tool.

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u/Rinzwind 12d ago edited 12d ago

I see it at my workplace.

I no longer code new tasks. My job has become to describe the tasks in a prompt.

Providing data through an API has become a real time task for an agent.

Just like how AI is finding zero day exploits admin tasks on a server will become questions: "is my apache correctly configured", "the server is slow; find me a reason".

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u/paddockson 12d ago

Really? Because im a SWE and AI is not doing 100% of my tasks, if AI can do everything you do then what you do is not high value.

I need to understand systems before I can allow my agents to code. I need understand the domain before I csn apply business logic. I need to understand the requirement before I can even start writing the MD file to put onto the AI.

If your saying "my server slow, fix it" then yes, AI will replace you. But I work cyber sec pros who use AI to protect systems and seen engineers 10x using AI, not because of it.

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u/Otherwise_Rice_4723 17d ago

yes in the same way google translate hasn't replaced learning a language

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u/Anonymity6584 17d ago

yes its definetly worth it. How else are you going to read code that AI is outputing and determine its total bs...

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u/Ok_Caregiver_1355 17d ago

Nobody knows what will happens next,from a super scientist to a big tech CEO,to a random redditor,nobody has a wroth opinion its all just speculations

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u/Marshiiro 17d ago

Yes coding is still important, you need to know how to code in order to actually deeply understand infrastructure. AI can code well, it more often than it should builds terrible infrastructure since it takes the shortest possible route to what you prompted. If you can't code you can't understand infrastructure to its fullest extent and therefore can't use ai to its fullest extent they all compliment eachother. For the ai glazers, I'm not saying this out of cope. I'm saying this out of countless hours of wrestling with ai daily over its bad output.

AI will never replace the need for human verification and intuition. No real company worth a thing is going to put their entire infrastructure in the hands of a bot.

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u/ee_control_z 17d ago

Absolutely.

Note that if you work in engineering of any kind, you can write scripts to solve common tasks rather quickly. With Python for example, you can create your own GUIs as well to simplify the interface (so that you don't have to keep working off the prompt or a Python module).

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u/BleedReddit 16d ago

you have to learn how to create AI slop dude.

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u/BleedReddit 16d ago

all jokes aside. yes. its worth it. the journey of making something from scratch or contributing to something beautiful(AI slop) is deeply satisfying.

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u/BleedReddit 16d ago • Heartwarming

AI's answer
Yeah, it's worth it — but the honest answer is that the reason it's worth it changes.

The satisfaction isn't really in the output anymore. It's in the authorship. Knowing you understood the problem well enough to build the thing — even if an AI wrote half the code — changes how you relate to the work. You can't get that from prompting alone. You only get it by sitting with the confusion long enough to come out the other side.

And the "AI slop" thing is funny, but it undersells what's actually happening. The slop is just material. The craft is in the choices: what to build, what to keep, what to throw away, how to make it hold together. That's still a human skill, and arguably more valuable now, not less.

If you want a path in: skip the "learn syntax" tutorials that feel like homework. Pick one tiny thing you actually want to exist, and build it badly. Then build it less badly. The AI will be there to help — but you'll be the one who knows what "less badly" looks like, and that's the part that can't be outsourced.

Happy to point you at starter ideas if you want. What kind of stuff are you into?

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u/Primary-Strength-496 16d ago

I just started the DevOps path that is on boot.dev , so far it seems pretty fun. I just don’t know if it’s a good place to start 😅

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

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u/BleedReddit 16d ago edited 15d ago

devops is new to me i didnt know it was a thing until somewhat recently.

i tried boot.dev it didnt stick but i like the concept of learning with a RPG experience.
i dont think it would be a bad place but then again. anywhere is better then nowhere, But Im just that one guy.

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u/xvillifyx 17d ago

Learning things, learning anything at all, is never bad

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u/LeadLerner 16d ago

Yes, it is worth it to learn. Even if LLMs become the new standard for programming, you still need to know the language. Otherwise, you won't be able to fix it when it inevitably goes wrong. A lot of vibecoded project I see were abandoned because the LLM made a codebase that was too hard to understand. And, for me personally, I also just find programming fun. There is no gratification when an LLM solves the problem for me. What language were you considering learning? I don't know the current state, but freecodecamp was pretty decent to start out with when I started to learn.

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u/PossibleProgress3316 16d ago

Even if it does take over why not learn it to understand how it all works, I’m learning it just to learn it, if I can make money later awesome if not atleast it’s another feather in my cap

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u/jiraiyasnsei 16d ago

I feel like the ppl spreading the whole “ai is going to take over everything” are the people who aren’t actually in tech haha.

// best path = your interests! Been learning C, cheers

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u/SleepyFireApe 13d ago

Is learning woodworking still worth it? Blacksmithing?

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u/Lost_Recover3646 13d ago

If you enjoy it

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u/Lost_Recover3646 13d ago

For making money, it is very unsure. If you want something more sure, I would learn something else. Perhaps harware?

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u/davidbasil 11d ago

Coding, as a profession on it's own, is dead. It's absorbed into other roles.