Because you want your children to learn the value and joy of creative expression? To learn the ability to solve problems – of any discipline, not just software – for themselves? To give them the ability to think critically and protect themselves in an increasingly hostile world? To feel the satisfaction and confidence boost of overcoming a difficult challenge?
It is possible to do all of this without needing to teach any coding skills whatsoever. I’d even argue that, given the current state of affairs, teaching these important and valuable life lessons in a way that does not involve software would be the greater value.
There is a difference between the lesson and the medium. The point that is being made is that software development may not be the best choice as a medium to carry these kinds of lessons going forward. Would you, during the early hay days of the printing press, want to teach your children to take pride in themselves for their hard-won excellence in manual text transcription?
Well we’re already in agreement that programming is merely one medium, but with AI being used as a replacement for just about any form of human expression - audiovisual arts, writing, mathematics, information sciences, etc - all mediums are under the same looming threat. So if we’re giving up on one medium, we’re gonna be giving up on most of them. And without them, we can’t really pass on those lessons. Learning doesn’t exist in the abstract, we also have to put those lessons into practice. If OP wasn’t a programmer but a musician, let’s say, then I’d have the same admittedly harsh reaction. I don’t see any reason to doompost about the end of programming, or the end of music, or the end of learning.
Finally, I don’t really know where you’re going with the printing press analogy? Like, yes? I want children to take pride in themselves for any skill they practice and enjoy? But the printing press isn’t really analogous to AI, for a number of reasons:
LLM’s, by their nature, produce an output that is of the same type as its inputs: text begets text, images beget images, etc. As such, you can make LLM’s generate their own instructions and feed that back into it. As we know from the Claude Code leaks, Anthropic was doing just that, using CC to ask C to work on CC.
Printing presses did not create more… printing presses. They created more print. Not even more words, the press itself didn’t conjure Martin Luther’s 95 theses into existence, it just copied an existing text. Which makes it a useful addition to our ability to create, not an outright replacement.
Printing presses were still human operated machines, requiring knowledge of its inner workings to maintain, repair, and operate. They’re not agentic, self-sustaining systems. Though you could argue that even AI is not self-sustaining, once its power grid fails. By the by, the printing press didn’t threaten global ecological catastrophe all on its own.
Printing presses did not, in fact, extinguish the pencil. Schools do still teach kids how to write. Heck, humble brag time, even I get compliments on my penmanship from time to time, and I write in all capital letters!
It is possible to do all of this without needing to teach any coding skills whatsoever. I’d even argue that, given the current state of affairs, teaching these important and valuable life lessons in a way that does not involve software would be the greater value.
There is a difference between the lesson and the medium. The point that is being made is that software development may not be the best choice as a medium to carry these kinds of lessons going forward. Would you, during the early hay days of the printing press, want to teach your children to take pride in themselves for their hard-won excellence in manual text transcription?
Well we’re already in agreement that programming is merely one medium, but with AI being used as a replacement for just about any form of human expression - audiovisual arts, writing, mathematics, information sciences, etc - all mediums are under the same looming threat. So if we’re giving up on one medium, we’re gonna be giving up on most of them. And without them, we can’t really pass on those lessons. Learning doesn’t exist in the abstract, we also have to put those lessons into practice. If OP wasn’t a programmer but a musician, let’s say, then I’d have the same admittedly harsh reaction. I don’t see any reason to doompost about the end of programming, or the end of music, or the end of learning.
Finally, I don’t really know where you’re going with the printing press analogy? Like, yes? I want children to take pride in themselves for any skill they practice and enjoy? But the printing press isn’t really analogous to AI, for a number of reasons:
LLM’s, by their nature, produce an output that is of the same type as its inputs: text begets text, images beget images, etc. As such, you can make LLM’s generate their own instructions and feed that back into it. As we know from the Claude Code leaks, Anthropic was doing just that, using CC to ask C to work on CC.
Printing presses did not create more… printing presses. They created more print. Not even more words, the press itself didn’t conjure Martin Luther’s 95 theses into existence, it just copied an existing text. Which makes it a useful addition to our ability to create, not an outright replacement.
Printing presses were still human operated machines, requiring knowledge of its inner workings to maintain, repair, and operate. They’re not agentic, self-sustaining systems. Though you could argue that even AI is not self-sustaining, once its power grid fails. By the by, the printing press didn’t threaten global ecological catastrophe all on its own.
Printing presses did not, in fact, extinguish the pencil. Schools do still teach kids how to write. Heck, humble brag time, even I get compliments on my penmanship from time to time, and I write in all capital letters!