Ask HN: With the rise of AI, how to approach my new career in software dev?
I recently graduated from a two-year diploma program in software development, and I’d love some advice for getting started in the industry (and, perhaps, for landing my first job). Apologies if this post is long-winded.
Some background: I’m graduating from this program in my mid-thirties. I previously graduated with a Master’s in English, and I believe that previous experience has helped me develop strong soft skills that will be beneficial regardless of job or industry.
During my software development education, AI exploded and seems to have changed everything, most immediately and obviously in the tech sector. No one seems to know what the ultimate impact of this technology will be, and it has, understandably, caused some anxiety and confusion. This is certainly the case for me and my peers.
Today, I read a Medium article by Matt Welsh[1], a well-known computer scientist and AI startup founder. He argues that “classical” computer science -- focused on programming, algorithms, data structures, and so on -- is in for a “major upheaval”:
“[T]he field will look less like an engineering endeavor and more like an educational one; that is, how to best educate the machine, not unlike the science of how to best educate children in school.”
In other words, engineers will be relegated to the role of supervisors, overseeing AI models that write programs.
(I appreciate he may be biased as an AI startup founder, but he has lots of education and experience in the field, and I don’t know enough to argue otherwise.)
In a way, this makes me sad. I got into this program because I was really interested in the act of coding itself, using it as a medium to solve problems. It’s gratifying to learn a language, get better at it, and write a working program.
I suppose this is a long-winded way of asking the following: does it make sense for me to focus on learning specific languages? I recently bought a book on Go because I’m interested in the language and want to build something with it. Is this worth my time? Should I instead focus on learning and leveraging LLMs? Do I balance the two? What’s a reasonable way to approach this?
More broadly speaking, what might you recommend I learn or focus on? What other advice do you have for approaching this rapidly changing tech landscape?
I certainly appreciate that this is a big question, but as someone new to the industry, I’d be deeply grateful for _any_ input from those more experienced and knowledgeable.
[1] https://levelup.gitconnected.com/the-end-of-programming-6e3f7ff0d8b4