Jensen Huang says kids shouldn't learn to code – they should leave it up to AI | Hacker News Reader

Jensen Huang says kids shouldn't learn to code – they should leave it up to AI

tomshardware.com

9 pointsthunderbong12 comments

I guess the more money you're making from tulips the easier it is to convince yourself that tulips are worth the price.

Rule 1 of a successful dope dealer is not to go high on your own supply.

Sure, but that doesn't mean you don't tell your junkie clients how it's gonna be the best high of their life.

I disagree.

Coding doesn't just make you a programmer, it helps you think logically. I've dealt with people w/o formal math and programming background and I can tell there's "something" different about their way of thinking. Coding, like math, encourages you to compartmentalize, think step by step, connect the dots, control complexity, and focus on the goal. People with less/no exposure to math and coding find it more challenging to stay on topic and think rationally.

I hope the next generation doesn’t have to code, only if it means there will be more “useless” people, like artists and thinkers. Hopefully they will be considered “useful” again by society.

Ah, yes, the death of programming. I'm pretty sure that people have been heralding the end of programming since approximately when Grace Hopper made a compiler. Some of the programming-killers have turned out to be useful (eg compilers), some, er, less so (eg 4GLs, 5GLs, previous attempts at AI-assisted programming), but none have thus far killed off programming.

Remember when the previous AI bubble was going to obsolete unsightly surgeons, drivers, etc with CV magic, about a decade ago?

This does not sound very radical at all. Software engineering will no doubt be transformed within 10 years and there’s plenty of uncertainty around what our future employment needs will be for people who primarily code. I feel vary similar about going into any kind of commercial art, writing, game development or SFX design.

It does sound radical, at least to me.

We've been abstracting away for years. Programming languages are an abstraction away from machine code. Libraries abstract away things like common sort, search algorithms.

Despite that, I still think it is advantageous to have knowledge of those concepts. I'm not saying you should program in assembly, but you should have a broad understanding of the difference between compiled and JIT languages.

You shouldn't necessarily need to know the implementations of Linked Lists or Hash Maps, but understanding when they should be used is important.

Reading code, even if writing it becomes more obsolete over time, will still be an important skill, because being able to compartmentalise and understand code will still be important for debugging.

There are a lot of skills that you learn when you learn software engineering, some of them are foundational skills that, even though they'll be transformed, will still be essential.

Which would be the end of progress. Even if AI is capable of taking away some if the drudgery we still need people who understand the structures and methodology to develop something new.

Not to mention creating the next generation of AI chips.

he's not wrong though. But we're not there just yet to completely give up learning coding.

CEO who will reap immense financial benefits by pumping AI pumps AI, news at 11.

> says kids shouldn't learn to code

Does he mean only adults should do it? /s

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