Should you learn to code in the AI era? Learn fundamentals, skip the rest until needed
dbasch · x · 2026-09-07
Veteran engineer dbasch offers a nuanced take on "learn to code" in the AI era by splitting the question in two:
- Worth learning: how programs work, writing a few end-to-end apps from scratch, basic algorithms — foundational knowledge, like his EE studies of P-N junctions.
- Skip until needed: software architecture, multiple languages, performance optimization, maintainable codebase design, code reviews, documentation and specs.
He draws on his own arc: coding as a teenager in the '80s felt like a superpower, prompting an EE degree to understand the tower of abstractions; but building distributed systems in Silicon Valley in the '90s taught him the real leverage lay in organization and robustness, never in circuit-level depth.
His conclusion: the world still needs people who understand technology deeply enough to build things — focus on the highest-leverage area: using today's tools to build what you want.
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