Essential Reading for Agentic Engineers – August 2025 | Hacker News Reader

Essential Reading for Agentic Engineers – August 2025

steipete.me

39 pointsghuntley15 comments

If current computer science curricula is accurately described here as “syntax memorization” then we’re already in deep trouble. I hope that’s just throwaway snark. (Though this whole thing reads very much like an LLM wrote it, and LLMs can’t be snarky, though they can sound snarky.)

Yeh, "Computer science curricula must evolve from syntax memorization..." starting with this right out of the gate makes me either deeply worried or sincerely skeptical about the following thoughts of the author.

My experience is that people fresh from getting their computer science degrees had the opposite problem where they didn't have enough practical courses coding something real to set them up for success in the real world.

Exactly this. At the university I went to a comp sci degree was mostly theoretical with a substantial overlap with mathematics (we could even substitute a certain amount of high level comp sci classes for mathematics classes if we wanted). When I took electives such as intro level neuroscience classes I was unprepared for the levels of memorization required.

I have a CS degree and have been in the industry for 25 years and man I hope "memorize syntax" was never supposed to be a notable component of any of that, because I certainly haven't....

When I was in uni we weren't even taught Pascal\Delphi or C++. We were expected to do this on our own. Maybe it is different now (and differs from place to place).

> Half expect 90% AI-written code within 2 years, half within 5 years [..]

Generated, not written. IMO this is an important distinction as developers know that generated code has limitations that differentiate it from hand written code. I'm sure this is a result of the quote being from people who aren't developers (usually CEOs), but when addressing developers it would be best to align the vocabulary to the audience.

Instead of reading it, just assign one of the agents to read it for you.

Feels great to be featured here!

I've found your blog by chance here on HN and it's been extremely useful in helping me navigate, as a software engineer, the new world of AI coding agents, so thank you for that!

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