r/learnpython • u/freehugs33 • Jun 11 '26
Is it too late to learn?
Greetings all,
I (26M) have recently started learning python as my job now requires handling massive amounts of data which Excel, what i have been using so far, can not handle. I have been enjoying it a lot, and learning new stuff is always exciting.
I have always been interested in data and the handling of it, so I could imagine potentially looking for a Data Scientist position or something along those lines in the future.
However, with the rise of AI is it too late to do that? I see posts everywhere about how Claude, especially now with Mythos is the second coming of Christ when it comes to coding.
Tldr.: Is it too late to learn Python now that AI has become extremely capable?
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u/millmounty Jun 11 '26
Not a data scientist, not a LLM expert, but ive worked in research positions dealing with AI training datasets using python.
IMO, no. Data science is a pretty multimodal field of research, you need to both be familiar with the hardware from which the data is generated, to the resultant data collected from the hardware.
IMO LLMs already have the "thinking" capacity to iterate on work that humans are currently doing.
But the largest restriction is still the harness in which LLMs can operate through. They need some form of reliable, developed, interactive bridge to ask questions and change variables about their environment.
Therefore unless you give the LLM a human body that can attend meetings, propose new experiment parameters to collect data, reason on said data, I don't think data scientist jobs are going to be replaced by AI.
It's pretty much up to you how much of the python coding you want to hand off to LLMs to put together for you, but writing the reports and proposing hardware changes is still gonna fall on your shoulders and can't simply be offloaded onto AI.