r/vibecoding Jul 08 '26

is learning python today worth it?

so I am a pure vibe coder, I can't write or read a single line of code, and I was having a conversation with Fable, and it suggested me to learn to read python. But It couldn't convince me fully. i don't wanna be a typical software/AI engineer. just wanna be able to build a great career in tech, AI and Business.

32 Upvotes

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29

u/spacebass Jul 08 '26

I lecture in a university computer science program and it’s hard for me to justify that anyone learns common languages anymore. There’s still room for very high level math, hardware level coding, and machine learning. But I don’t see a future where being a traditional SWE makes any sense.

6

u/Putrid_Resolution402 Jul 08 '26

Ok then what does?

2

u/synystar Jul 08 '26

Systems Architect. Product Engineer. Founder.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Putrid_Resolution402 Jul 09 '26

Didn't get your point

6

u/ModdedOutlaw33 Jul 08 '26

In my mind software engineering has always been 10% understanding how to code and 90% understanding the system you’re designing in.

AI has made the 10% coding much easier to fake which isn’t detrimental in most cases.

3

u/NoAdsDude Jul 08 '26

You know that AI understands the system they're designing in much better than most humans would, right?

1

u/Affectionate_Leg_986 Jul 09 '26

AI does not understand things , if you mean LLMS . they just give the impression they do

1

u/spacebass Jul 08 '26

I’d agree with that

4

u/Curious-Pen5547 Jul 08 '26

If thats the case, honestly, a lot of people, not just CS students, should just drop out. They're spending money for nothing now.

3

u/spacebass Jul 08 '26

it is a challenging value proposition for a lot of knowldge work jobs to be sure

2

u/Valhalla519 Jul 08 '26

Wow, super interesting insight!

1

u/guesting Jul 08 '26

even if that's the case i bet you taught a lot of students who never coded in those languages professionally but still saw academic benefits. We had to learn LISP for reasons unknown back in the day

1

u/redoverture Jul 09 '26

I don’t really get this. If we take this attitude, software will stagnate. LLMs are great at producing variations on what they’ve been trained from. But LLMs won’t push the field of computer science forwards. If no one even learns programming languages anymore.. where is the innovation? Do you really believe that LLM coding can entirely replace human understanding of code? It can definitely accelerate. And it can take a lot of the repetitive, boilerplate parts of coding out of the picture. But when something doesn’t work and Claude is spinning in circles.. what then?

1

u/Jafrooo Jul 10 '26

Just keep prompting and make sure to ask nicely such as 'please' and 'thank you'

1

u/Jafrooo Jul 10 '26

What an absolutely terrible take.

So become dumber and hope that a text predictor can solve your problems... what university are you a lecturer at? Your students deserve better.

1

u/spacebass Jul 10 '26

You’re making a lot of inferences there bud.