You still need to know what good code looks like to use these tools. If you go forward in your career trusting the output of LLMs without the skills to evaluate the correctness, style, functionality of that code then you will have problems.
People still write low level machine code today, despite compilers having existed for 70+ (?) years.
We'll always need full-stack humans who understand everything down to the electrons even in the age of insane automation that we're entering.
Could not agree more! I have 20+ years experience and use Cursor/Sonnet daily. It saves huge amounts of time.
But I can’t imagine this tool in the hands of someone who does not have a solid understanding of programming.
You need to understand when to push back and why. It’s like doing mini code reviews all the time. LLMs are very convincing and will happily generate garbage with the utmost authority.
+1 to this. There has never been a better time to learn to code - the learning curve is being shaved down by these new LLM-based tools, and the amount of value people with programming literacy can produce is going up by an order of magnitude.
People who know both coding and LLMs will be a whole lot more attractive to hire to build software than people who just know LLMs for many years to come.
Can you just make a blog post on this explaining your thesis in detail? It's hard for me not to see non-technical "vibe coding" [0] sidelining everyone in the industry except for the most senior of senior devs/PMs.
I will give a little more pessimistic answer. If someone is right now studying CS then probably have expectation that can work with this profession for 30-40 years until retirement and this profession will still pay much more than average salary for most of devs anywhere (instead only of elite devs or those in US) and easily to find such job or easily switch employer.
I think the best period of Software Devs will be gone in few years. Knowing how how to code and fix things will be important still but more important to be also Jack-of-Many-Trades to provide more value: know a little about SEO, have a good taste of design and be able to tweak simple design, good taste how to organise code, better soft skills and managing or educating less tech-savvy stuff.
Another option is to specialise in some currently difficult subfield: robotics, ML, CUDA, rust and try to be this elite dev with expectation would have to move to SV or any such tech hub.
Best general recommendation I would give right now (especially for someone who is not from US) to someone who is currently studying is to use that a lot of time you have right now with not much responsibility to make some product that can provide you semi-passive income on a monthly basis ($5k-$10k) to drag yourself out of this rat race. Even if you not succeed or revenue stream will run out eventually you will learn those other skills that will be more important later if wanna be employed (SEO, code & design taste, marketing, soft skills).
Because most likely this window of opportunity might be only for the next few years in similar way when the best window for Mobile Apps was first ~2 years when App Store started
I would love to make "side revenue", but frankly I am awful at practical idea generation. I'm not a founder type I think, maybe a technical co-founder I guess.
Serious answer: learn to code.
You still need to know what good code looks like to use these tools. If you go forward in your career trusting the output of LLMs without the skills to evaluate the correctness, style, functionality of that code then you will have problems.
People still write low level machine code today, despite compilers having existed for 70+ (?) years.
We'll always need full-stack humans who understand everything down to the electrons even in the age of insane automation that we're entering.
Could not agree more! I have 20+ years experience and use Cursor/Sonnet daily. It saves huge amounts of time.
But I can’t imagine this tool in the hands of someone who does not have a solid understanding of programming.
You need to understand when to push back and why. It’s like doing mini code reviews all the time. LLMs are very convincing and will happily generate garbage with the utmost authority.
Don’t trust and absolutely verify.
+1 to this. There has never been a better time to learn to code - the learning curve is being shaved down by these new LLM-based tools, and the amount of value people with programming literacy can produce is going up by an order of magnitude.
People who know both coding and LLMs will be a whole lot more attractive to hire to build software than people who just know LLMs for many years to come.
Can you just make a blog post on this explaining your thesis in detail? It's hard for me not to see non-technical "vibe coding" [0] sidelining everyone in the industry except for the most senior of senior devs/PMs.
[0] https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383
I will give a little more pessimistic answer. If someone is right now studying CS then probably have expectation that can work with this profession for 30-40 years until retirement and this profession will still pay much more than average salary for most of devs anywhere (instead only of elite devs or those in US) and easily to find such job or easily switch employer.
I think the best period of Software Devs will be gone in few years. Knowing how how to code and fix things will be important still but more important to be also Jack-of-Many-Trades to provide more value: know a little about SEO, have a good taste of design and be able to tweak simple design, good taste how to organise code, better soft skills and managing or educating less tech-savvy stuff.
Another option is to specialise in some currently difficult subfield: robotics, ML, CUDA, rust and try to be this elite dev with expectation would have to move to SV or any such tech hub.
Best general recommendation I would give right now (especially for someone who is not from US) to someone who is currently studying is to use that a lot of time you have right now with not much responsibility to make some product that can provide you semi-passive income on a monthly basis ($5k-$10k) to drag yourself out of this rat race. Even if you not succeed or revenue stream will run out eventually you will learn those other skills that will be more important later if wanna be employed (SEO, code & design taste, marketing, soft skills).
Because most likely this window of opportunity might be only for the next few years in similar way when the best window for Mobile Apps was first ~2 years when App Store started
I would love to make "side revenue", but frankly I am awful at practical idea generation. I'm not a founder type I think, maybe a technical co-founder I guess.