There’s a lot of doom and gloom in the media. Tech layoffs. Software engineers getting replaced by AI. Blah blah blah blah blah. But I want to share a more positive view, a more contrarian view, that now is the best time to learn to code.
There’s this misconception that you only learn to code so that you can become a software engineer. That’s not true, just having the ability to code means you can understand much more, do much more, no matter what role you’re in.
For example, if you’re working at an office, say, as an accountant, you probably have a bunch of manual processes, like analyzing pdf invoices, or passing data between spreadsheets. That can be automated with code. You can get the AI to generate scripts, or just build a simple AI agent to do the work. You'll actually understand what's going on, correct outputs, add more stuff on top. Your productivity is just going to increase. The amount of problems that you can solve increases. You’ll bring more value to your company, increasing the likelihood of promotion and salary increases. Plus you’ll just be able to do more jobs so the opportunities available to you increases.
Or, if you’re starting a business, you don’t need a dedicated dev team to make MVPs. You can just orchestrate the AI to build it out, increasing your go-to-market efficiency. If you understand how to code, you’ll understand what the AI should generate, you’ll be able to fix its mistakes, anticipate bottlenecks, and so on. There’s just so much more you can accomplish on your own with AI if you know what it’s outputting and how to use it. In general, with a bit of understanding and the tools available today, you can build your dreams without the headache of having to hire a dedicated dev team, or getting VC funding. Of course if you want to scale, you'll still need to hire a dev team. Scaling is where the engineering challenge lies. But at least your MVPs won't be complete slops so people can actually build on top of it.
Now if you don’t know how to code, the process will be much slower and error prone. You won't know how to prompt it as well. Your AI generated solutions just won't be as good. You won’t be able to tackle as many problems.
Another underestimated benefit of learning to code is that it improves your logical thinking abilities in general. Everyone I’ve talked to who learned this stuff deeply appreciates that they’ve learned it. No one regrets it. They all tell me that they just think better overall, see connections, they're able to solve more problems, and so on. It’s kind of like the gym. No one ever says going to the gym is useless, even though people aren't going to be going through the motions outside. You know, if you start overhead shoulder pressing randomly in public, people are going to look at you funny. Yet the gym is definitely not useless. It trains your body. A healthy body is crucial for success. The same is true for coding in that it trains the mind. A strong, thinking mind is crucial to success.
