Reasons to Learn Programming Skills Without AI

💥 AI can now write code — so why should we bother learning it? This isn’t just a tech question. It’s a defining question for our careers, our companies, and the next generation. I’ve watched AI generate complete, functional apps in minutes — faster than any dev team I’ve ever worked with. Impressive? Absolutely. But here’s the reality: when something breaks, I fall back on my coding skills to understand, debug, and fix it. Without that knowledge, I’d be flying blind. Why I believe abandoning coding is dangerous: ⚠️ Security & performance — AI-generated code isn’t always clean, safe, or efficient. ⚠️ Control gap — if only a few understand critical systems, we hand them all the power. ⚠️ Loss of critical thinking — when we stop understanding, we stop questioning, adapting, and improving. Yes — AI will soon code better than us. But human coders bring uniquely human skills that AI can’t: ✨ True creativity — inventing entirely new solutions, architectures, and coding patterns inspired by our personality, culture, and lived experience. ✨ Critical thinking & ethics — deciding why something should be built, not just how. ✨ Relationships & empathy — building solutions that meet real human needs, shaped by genuine connection. >> This is what we need to teach coders now. Future-Proof yourself: ✅ Learn to code. ✅ Understand enough to evaluate, guide, and challenge AI’s output. ✅ Lead with uniquely human skills where machines can’t go. AI can build faster than any human. But the future will be shaped by those who know what to build, why it matters, and how to keep it aligned with human values. The real question isn’t “Should we learn to code?” It’s: 👉 Do we want to lead AI… or be led by it? #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #FutureOfWork #Coding #AIandHumans #Innovation #AgenticAI #AIagents

After coding for 25 years and teaching thousands developers, I'm certain of one thing: AI is creating an entire gen of incompetent programmers. And before you @ me about being a technophobe... I've use GPT 3.0 since it came out. Copilot. Windsurf. Claude. Basically every single AI coding tool out there, and I've been in it since day 1. But here's what I'm seeing in the real world: Devs who can't debug their own code because they never wrote it. Copy-paste architects. "Coders" who panic the moment Cursor writes up something that doesn't work. They get stuck on the most basic of tasks, because they've never had to think through the logic. They never went through the struggle — never even tried to learn. It's like wanting to learn how to drive, but you're on Tesla's autopilot. Sure, you'll get from A to B... until the computer fails, and you realize that you never learned how to actually drive. AI tools are incredible tools — for experience devs. They can make a 1x dev a 100x dev. But they are only multipliers if you already know and understand what the code is doing. For beginners... they're just intellectual crutches that prevent real learning. A few things I've learned along the way that you can't really teach: - Thinking through architecture design at a higher level - Know how adding specific features affects the entire application - Understand how to write and define requirements docs - Build and apply mental models to coding problems - Debugging code line by line and realize what makes good and bad code If you can't code without a crutch, you're not a coder. You're helpless. And companies are starting to notice, and that's good: we don't want to create an entire workforce that doesn't understand their own craft. Don't throw away your tools. But if you're a junior dev: - Learn to code WITHOUT AI first - Understand what you're building - Use AI to enhance your skills, not replace them The developers who will thrive in the next decade aren't the ones who are the best at prompting the AI. They'll be the ones who understand what the AI is actually writing. Because when the AI hallucinates (and it will, even years from now), when it suggests vulnerable code (and it does, and will continue to do so), when it doesn't understand your specific use case (and it won't, because requirements may be hazy)... you better know how to read code for real. Otherwise you're not a developer. You're just a very expensive copy-paste machine. Tell me I'm wrong 👇 P.S. I'm documenting my exact process for using Claude Code to write 95% of my code, while maintaining top-notch quality and 100% control over the final outcome. Want to see how? Get on the list: https://lnkd.in/gf4PmmM7

GitHub’s CEO recently said something in an interview that stuck with me: manual coding remains essential, even as AI tools change how we build. At first, that might sound surprising. AI can now autocomplete functions, scaffold entire projects, and even suggest high-level architectures. It seems like the need to write code by hand is fading. But the truth is, manual coding still matters - not just because of the syntax, but because of the thinking it requires. Writing code line by line forces clarity: you have to make decisions, uncover ambiguity. You start to see the structure of your ideas and where they might fall apart. It is not just a task - it is a way of modeling the world and reasoning through complexity. AI can assist with this, and in many ways it already does. It speeds things up, offers suggestions, and handles boilerplate. But it still needs guidance. And that guidance becomes sharper when you truly understand what you are building. Manual coding is not disappearing. It is shifting. From mechanical repetition to deeper thought. From getting things to work to understanding how and why they work. The future is not about learning to prompt better. It is about understanding more deeply, and then prompting with precision.