Overheard a teenager say coding is 'just typing' and it got me thinking

I was waiting for coffee yesterday and this kid, maybe 16, told his friend that anyone can code now with AI. He said it's just typing words into a box. Made me chuckle but also made me think about how things have shifted. When I started learning BASIC in the 80s, you had to understand every line. No help, no internet. Now my nephew uses ChatGPT to write Python scripts. I wonder if the same frustration is still there when things break. For those of you learning now, do you feel like the foundation stuff matters, or is it more about just making things work however you can?

2 comments

2 Comments

matthew_baker19d ago

What gets me is this is the same pattern with pretty much everything now. People see the surface of something and think that's all there is. My friend's kid thinks a plumber just turns a wrench. My neighbor thinks landscaping is just pushing a mower. The difference with coding is the invisible parts are really invisible. You can't see the debugging, the logic, the trying to remember where you put that semi colon. So it looks easy from the outside. But ask anyone who's spent three hours tracking down a missing bracket and they'll tell you different.

nathan_torres3419d ago

Are you sure that kid was totally wrong? I mean yeah, debugging sucks and all that, but honestly the tools have changed everything. @matthew_baker I get your point about invisible work, but my 14 year old niece built a working weather bot in like 20 minutes with no coding knowledge. She just told the AI what she wanted and fixed the errors when it broke. The foundation stuff matters less now than knowing how to ask the right questions and spot when the output is garbage. I learned on BASIC too, but I'd trade that for today's shortcuts in a heartbeat.