Programming in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Is It Still Worth Learning?

I was reflecting on how necessary and promising it is to study programming nowadays, given the advancement of technology, specifically artificial intelligence. This made me remember when I was 10 years old and my mother enrolled me in a computer course.

At the time it was called IPD, Introduction to Data Processing. It was an important milestone, where the change from Windows 95 to Windows 98 was beginning. The course still offered Office Package training modules and Computer Assembly and Maintenance.

My mother said this was the future and that I should focus on “computer science” studies. Advancing through the course I was gifted with a computer, where I spent hours of entertainment on ICQ and mIRC. I had my first contact with programming at that time, where studying was a pastime and there I barely knew I was directing my professional future.

When I started working professionally with programming 20 years ago, we had great difficulty in terms of information, documentation and access. This becomes even more evident if we look 40 years ago, where programming languages were more complex and required much more specialization.

I clearly see that this entry barrier has decreased, everything is much more accessible, making programming more inclusive. Today many beginning programmers or anyone who is not in the technology field, can obtain complex code easily through AI assistants.

An interesting example of how AI is transforming programming is through tools like GitHub Co-Pilot, which greatly assist in the software development process, generating code, documentation, supporting automated test writing and much more. This shows how AI can facilitate the software development process, but also highlights the need for programming knowledge to understand and direct these tools effectively.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang spoke in a presentation that programming as we know it, may become unnecessary with AI advances, as technology is being developed so that no one needs to program anymore and programming language becomes more accessible to everyone.

Although this vision may seem futuristic and promising, I believe that the study of programming continues to be necessary, especially its fundamentals.

I don’t believe that programming as we know it will change drastically in 5 years, but maybe in 20 we’ll have other forms of languages and devices for coding. AI will clearly be an accelerator in this area, despite being a fantastic assistant to help in debugging processes or even completing lines of code accelerating development, in terms of reliability curation by a programmer is still necessary.

Therefore, with all technological advancement, and considering that AI will not replace programmers, but will assist them, making them super programmers, giving them more time for other tasks with human cognition to be executed, we should continue learning programming, even to continue the future of AI.

My mother showed me years ago that studying “computer science” was investing in the future. Today at 80 years old, I understand that she continues to be right. Studying programming not only prepares professionals to work with new technologies, but also enables them to innovate and create new solutions.

Just as she taught me the importance of technology, I want to pass this vision to my daughter, I believe that programming will continue to be a valuable skill for the future.