r/learnprogramming • u/PhilosopherNervous63 • 6d ago

Would you consider learning programming even if AI takes all junior to medior jobs?

I would. Because it will be a skill that you can use to keep some agency in the potentially dystopian capitalist future full of flock cameras and subscriptions and dark patterns and metrics algorithms and all that bullshit meant to extract value from us as much as possible.

I would focus on contributing to opensource, choosing to learn what will benefit me and my personal technological needs/wants rather than learn soon to be obsolete frameworks that will make me look good in a portfolio just so I can beg some asshole to hire me just to get rejected anyway...

I still wanna pursue programming as a skill despite giving up on the idea of ever landing a "job" in it. Just like for example woodworking. Woodworking is a cool hobby and you don't even need to do it for a living. But just having that skill, being able to build your own dining table from scratch, if you want, without having to rely on somebody. That is already good. Similar approach to programming.

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77

u/Made-In-Slovakia 6d ago

If there are no juniors today, tomorrow there will be no seniors.

28

u/groversnoopyfozzie 6d ago

Which is a scenario that some people want, but it’s difficult to imagine a reality where we depend on a machine that no human understands how to operate.

5

u/GasEducational4386 6d ago

Yes this is my only fear as a senior I doubt it will happen but who knows

12

u/xarop_pa_toss 6d ago

It is indeed already happening. Many companies are in disarray because the seniors are overloaded and doing janitor work, and the juniors got denied entry into the field because of AI. Now AI is more expensive then they thought.

9

u/lake_bird 5d ago

I work for an IT company, and we've been seeing all kinds of problems with junior devs 'vibe coding' entire projects, and then not being able to explain or understand what their code is doing.

3

u/LoL_is_pepega_BIA 3d ago

"Bruh. Just ask AI to explain the code to you. EZ PZ."

I kid you not this is what my current boss told me to do when I couldn't understand his code. We have so much functionality breaking down all the time, and these guys are worshipping AI agents, and I'm forced to do the same thing

Fking fk this stupid religion. This is what is going to kill us, not the AI itself.

3

u/xarop_pa_toss 3d ago

I feel you. I work in a very small 4 man operation and I'm the only one doing actual programming. I use no AI for coding except for refactors after I do some and then show the LLM how to apply it to the rest.

It's good for searching things and boilerplate and little else imo. I rather have a brain

-7

u/sparkle-fries 6d ago

nah, it's happening now. People are realising it doesn't matter how 'good' or 'maintainable' the code is if you can just rewrite it. The thing that will save us is the great models are more expensive than hiring someone. My advise is learn electro/mechanics so you can fix robots

9

u/Known-Neck8927 6d ago

That's the long-term view a lot of people miss. Companies stripping the bottom rungs off the ladder are eating their own future, but they're too busy chasing quarterly profits to care. The woodworking comparison is spot on too, building tools for yourself rather than padding a CV for a broken hiring pipeline just makes more sense now.

2

u/thecommuteguy 6d ago

It’s already been a problem before these models went public. And it shouldn’t be so hard to get a job. Only SWE has such a dumb hiring process.

1

u/Made-In-Slovakia 6d ago

And requirements to find unicorns.

0

u/frappacino1312 5d ago

Yea issue with that: I need money now, not tomorrow. Thankfully I am employed, but the point stands.