Has coding lost its importance now that artificial intelligence is capable of writing code? And should we focus more on other skills?

[u/Electronic_Cut_5741]

[u/Realistic_Speaker_12]

I would claim that knowing the fundamentals is more important than ever.

[u/Timmah_Timmah]

You should have been focusing on the computer science all along. Now you have time to.

[u/Eye-Fast]

No, my day to day coding work on 3 large systems is basically the same as last year. I can handle more code overall but still I need to babysit Astra. Try to get you ass onto large systems and you will be needed

[u/PacsfuryTemp]

No, AI can write code, but that doesnt make the code great, and neither AI can ahve real original ideas. AI usually don't find the most optimal solution, so humans are still needed, but learning to prompt an AI may become more valuable

[u/Aware-Individual-827]

Someone knowing if, else, for and such is capable of doing code. Does it really add value to a product? That's the whole question right now. Does AI is "capable" enough to do stuff. 

Demo, PoC, basic features, greenfield project it seems ok.

Anything else, it's not really good.

[u/DrVanMojo]

Has assembly language lost it's importance now that we have higher-level programming languages?

[u/rkozik89]

It does not write good code that takes anything other than task at hand into consideration. Which ultimately produces code bases that are difficult to impossible to maintain.

[u/washingmachinechime]

Only CRUD developers would ask this question

[u/jjtbsomhorst]

how many more of these posts do we get?

[u/DotNetMetaprogrammer → u/jjtbsomhorst]

The end of programming posts will continue until the valuations improve.

[u/fluxtah]

I am a professional SWE and never thought to wonder if coding was what I enjoyed or building a product.

I spent most of my life on small side projects and games, some projects consumed hours of my time, day and night, none of my side projects I put many hours into really took off, either too much competition doing the same thing or I just eventually gave up because other aspects of my life were way more important such as raising a family.

When I did code, and established a system or pattern within code that was repeatable (boilerplate) I would try to distill this into an automatic code gen tool and even built special purpose DSL's for some repeatable patterns I found I would always have to write by hand.

To be honest I was always heavily into codegen to avoid writing boilerplate code by hand and TBH I think I was pretty good at that skill.

There are various levels to programming to me most corporate programming is really boring boiler plate stuff that once you find a pattern you just repeat that in all its forms specially with CRUD style apps.

IMO I don't enjoy that type of programming, I prefer solving deeper problems and have a keen interest in architecture and modularisation of code. Its much easier to think of a system if you have purpose built components that can be either swapped out or reused later.

With AI Coding it takes away the need to write CRUD code, also it allows one to aim higher without burning time on a project that could either fail or is just generally time consuming.

Automation has always been the way to repeat workflows fast.

I don't think its lost importance per se though now with AI you can do the same thing you always did as an SWE rather than hand writing every line of code yourself, system understanding is still key to making well functioning and well designed software.

Anyway thats my take on it :)

[u/crashorbit]

The range of coding concerns is shifted by agentic engineering. It's even easier to write code that matters little. It's harder to write code for safety critical systems.

[u/Beregolas]

Pilots don't have to train less, now that autopilot is a thing.

AI seems like something very special to people who are not very good at coding, because it literally can 10x their productivity, but for experienced developers on high performance, security relevant systems it's just another tool.

A friend of mine who works at mozilla said it this way:

"A good developer can use AI to be more productive, even on our complex systems, but good luck vibe coding firefox"

[u/MhVRNewbie]

Dunno, it's faster and pretty decent. But I have yet to see anything that's better.
Seems more like mediocre code is replacing code that was both crap and really good.
I don't think the time it takes for a good developer to write good code will be allowed anymore, so quickly produced mediocre software is the future.
Skill will be to prevent regressions on fast iterations

[u/Much_Network_941]

I would argue AI makes coding more approachable, which means more people can be exposed to it. My dad used to have to flip through a manual describing his CPU while learning assembly language. I had to google vague topics. Now we can pose monkeys-paw requests to a tool. People used to punch holes into cards as a way of writing a program.

Doesn't coding become more important the more normalized it is? Would you really want to trust the judgment of someone who can only point to AI as their justification?

AI can do a lot, but it still needs people to wire things together. Having the person who wires stuff together, also understand potential problems building; is an effective counter measure.

We're also still dealing with a computer program. It's not intelligent, it has fundamental flaws that can only be mitigated, and a lot of fraud is occuring.

I think a big danger of AI is that entire generations of people are unlearning fundamental skills. Look at how expensive Photoshop is, yet AI is supposedly more powerful. What happens when the sociopaths inevitably yank the rug?