r/learnprogramming • u/Frxdnt • 3h ago
Topic Do you think that human made code will gain value in the future?
I'm entering CS next year, tho I'm really doubting about it at this point becouse honestly with the evolution of the LLM made code I'm really losing hope in general. I always viewed coding as an art, which i learned the basics when i was growing up and I had some really simple projects in python a couple years ago (which I forgot almost everything becouse I haven't had the time to it until vwry recently where i re-learnt the basics), and honestly it hurts a bit to see what I considered an intellectual field being reduced to "claude, make no mistakes". I'm a musician and artist so my morals are very against AI...
Feelings aside, I'm from Chile and here we have a free career at college if we are poor enough -- which I am -- ! and I'm really passionate about computers and hardware in general, so I'd really love to study either computer science or engineering.
Asking for computer science, is there another fields besides programming, for example networking; that I can work on in the future? I'll probably keep programming as a hobby if I don't find a job as one.
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u/GuaranteedGuardian_Y 3h ago
You never pay engineers for writing code to begin with. This is true now and it was true forever. That type of a job is something a translator does. You pay them specifically for what they write and how they write it.
When an engineer is working on a task they are not asking themselves "how do I write the code for this", before AI there was a meme about "web developers copy pasting stack overflow" and everyone laughed at it because everyone knew that it was only true for a very small minority of engineers.
The coming generations of engineers might never have to write syntax again (yet they must know it anyway.
Here is the actual job of the engineers: how can I achieve the task relative to the constraints of what the hardware and networking allows me to do? The hard part is understanding your constraints and overcoming them with optimizations customized case by case.
That's the expertise of programming, not the syntax.
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u/cerberus6320 2h ago
People are still needed for a good top level understanding. How systems should Intermingle, where things need to be protected etc...
An LLM may be able to code small things well, but they are still only statistical engines that are trained on something. They have limited context windows, and even with massive contexts may not be able to accurately demonstrate an understanding of rules, especially when you present contradictory pieces of information or a timeline of events.
LLMs are not AGI.
You have a skill set ingrained into your body where you can conceptualize and formulate even very large concepts, and put that in context.
So don't get too discouraged. Robots can't replace plenty of human qualities, and you should work hard to understand your own strengths better.
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u/ProgramsFun 3h ago
writing code is no loneger a necessary but learning to know and understand code is still the requirement and the bar has also been raised for new programmer looking for a job. AI still cant work well on large codebases , writes unncessry fallbacks or uses some kind of workaround which is not needed, duplicate utillities etc and also ai can never be held accountable for any errors in project , its the human using it
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u/burlingk 3h ago
Code is worth what it does.
But the ability to create human written code will become more valuable.
All these people convinced you don't need to know how to code, ultimately won't be able to get jobs driving LLMs because they won't have the skills needed to know what the machine is creating.
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u/NightflowerFade 3h ago
Human written code will be a novelty. Look at it like someone being able to add really big numbers by hand quickly. It's not particularly useful, but you might be able to get a few million views on YouTube if you're lucky
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u/Brownie_McBrown_Face 1h ago
It already kinda is in some places. I work for a Fortune top 25 company and I haven’t written a line of code manually in 3 months. Obviously I’m still responsible for every PR I make and every contribution I author. I read thru it all too still and don’t commit anything without verification but it’s insane to think how fast things have changed. Two years ago I wouldn’t trust an LLM beyond anything besides boilerplate or error debugging.
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u/azian0713 3h ago
Learning to code by hand teaches you problem solving, engineering, perseverance, and how to judge what’s good enough. LLMs can do none of that but are much more powerful if the human piloting them can employ these skills.
The fact that you think LLMs can replace SWE, and someone can just said “Claude, code this for me, make no mistakes!” shows you don’t have enough experience coding by hand to understand why that’s impossible.
I highly encourage you to get your compsci degree with the focus on why you’re learning the concepts, how to use them in a bigger picture setting, and ultimately, how to use what you learn to solve problems.
LLMs are great for someone who has an idea of structure and purpose. It can’t just make tools and code by itself. That’s the point of your compsci degree
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u/AFlyingGideon 1h ago
I keep reading this. Is it hyperbole, or are there people who actually believe that adding "make no mistakes" (or some such thing) is a magic phrase to make "vibe coding" work?
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u/Gold-Part4688 5m ago
i mean tell it to take a deep breath first and it'll do better, nonsense machines
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u/Stromedy1 2h ago
the code was never the product. the judgment was.
i watched an agent hand a client a 'refactored' auth flow that dropped the rate limiter. the client blamed the engineer, not the prompt.
a CS degree is mostly not programming anyway: algorithms, systems, databases, networking, security, OS. the juniors who survive aren't the fastest typists. they're the ones who can read AI output and smell the lie.
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u/COCK_SWALLOW_GOD 3h ago
You’re cooked, but it will be okay. Start lifting weights.
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u/Frxdnt 3h ago
yeah not gonna lie, I'm yet to see a single work that doesn't suck becouse lately there's a global job msrket crash...
and I'm into calisthenics and healthy so dw about it lol
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u/Xylozene 3h ago
Not true at all brother. There is no global job crisis in any way, where did you read that? Unemployment remains at a steady 4.9% globally and isn't expected to rise anytime soon. Social media may make you think that there is, but there just isn't.
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u/PineapplePiazzas 3h ago
Llms use remixed human code so its all the same.
Humans are better at quality checks and making the whole, so humans are somewhat needed a while more.
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u/Pale_Height_1251 3h ago
Honestly, no I don't think so. We've never really valued code or sought as an industry to truly improve the state of the art. That's why we got Linux not Plan 9.
At the end of the day, money will win, and computing will lose.
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u/the_duke_man 2h ago
I don’t think that hand crafted software will necessarily be valuable beyond possibly coding challenges. But that’s ok. I didn’t learn to code so I could code. I learned so I could solve problems with computers. To me AI is a cheat code to be more ambitious and experiment with UI/UX and functionality I didn’t have time to do before.
AI doesn’t solve problems, people solve problems using AI, just Ike any other tool. And certain skill sets are going to be better at using AI to solve problems with software. A comp sci trained person will generally create a more performant, secure and fully functional solution using AI than a vibe coder, in my experience. And companies that depend on software for their existence may need fewer trained coders, but they will still want trained coders.
Also, DevOps may be something to look at since all the software still has to be built, deployed and kept running no matter how it’s made.
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u/Almagest910 1h ago
There’s nothing special about human made code. You can’t actually write code with ai tools, maybe auto generate it fully or tweak things, but the architecture decisions should mostly be understood and justifiable by a human. There’s no reason to believe we will go back to writing code by hand fully, outside of learning or hobby projects.
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u/theGaido 28m ago
???
Do you think human made art will gain value in the future?
This is question you ask.
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u/Last_Swordfish9135 3h ago
Most senior developers are not writing code by hand, but instead are focused more on designing the higher-level systems, and were not writing code by hand before AI either. I don't think human-written code has the same artistic appeal as human-made art, because even though it's also rewarding to create, the people who pay for it are only interested in efficiency, not artistic value. Most of a computer science degree is not about programming, so if it's really what you love, do it anyways.