Learning to Code in the era of AI 👨‍💻

With the recent adoption of generative AI and tools such as Github Copilot, many people claim that coding (understood as somebody typing the code into a machine) will definitely become obsolete. They say that AI will take that task from humans and that is pointless to start learning how to code in 2023.

Well, let me DISAGREE. I strongly believe that, even with the help of AI tools, we will need people with deep understanding of the programming languages in the next decades. Let's think about COBOL for a moment, a programming language created in 1959 that "should" be more than obsolete but it isn't. In fact, the few coders that have mastered it earn more than average in the IT industry. Why is that? First of all, because many old systems where built on COBOL and its a waste of time and money to just re-do everything in let's say python. Second of all, nobody wants to deal with new security issues and vunerabilities while doing the transition.

And that's exactly what is going to happen to today's programmers. In my opinion, less people will learn how to code, as machines will be doing a big part of the job, but those few programmers will be extremely valuable, as they will be able to maintain legacy code that machines don't really understand, and they will be the ones supervising AI-generated code, as it will be much more trusted after a human has validated it.

So, if you are wondering whether it is a good idea to start learning how to code in 2023, I really think it is.