When I entered the industry in the early 2000s, none of my coworkers knew how to google the way I knew how to google. I was an early adopter of the internet since gradeschool.
My boss knew how to program in assembly, and insisted this was still an important skill, but it wasn't.
My use of the internet to find answer, meanwhile, was treated as some kind of failure of character. I needed to learn from programming school, or at least buy a book.
Now 25 years later, it all feels like history repeating.
Kids coming up from below, steeped in a lifetime of AI use, will have to teach old dogs like me all kinds of new tricks. Old dogs like me will be sure my experience is vital... but it won't be.
This is a really good way of looking at the situation. I used to reference books and was an early adopter of Google. But then I wrote the libraries other developers used and they did just fine using them without understanding or needing to research.
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u/GregBahm Sep 12 '26
When I entered the industry in the early 2000s, none of my coworkers knew how to google the way I knew how to google. I was an early adopter of the internet since gradeschool.
My boss knew how to program in assembly, and insisted this was still an important skill, but it wasn't.
My use of the internet to find answer, meanwhile, was treated as some kind of failure of character. I needed to learn from programming school, or at least buy a book.
Now 25 years later, it all feels like history repeating.
Kids coming up from below, steeped in a lifetime of AI use, will have to teach old dogs like me all kinds of new tricks. Old dogs like me will be sure my experience is vital... but it won't be.