Dan versus Code

@NoahKingJr By knowing more. Both theory and skills. CS education (formal or informal) matters now more than ever.

How should software engineers future-proof their careers?

I saw a post earlier on X, it reminds me of a good saying I know, for the sakes of not getting called s3x!st and triggering some woke bot farm, I’ll quote the post and won’t refer to the original saying. It goes like: “C++ creates good engineers, good engineers create Python, Python creates soft engineers, soft engineers create bad times…” you know how the rest of it goes lol. There’s a lot of truth to that. P.S. Python is a great language. I thought I’d leave this here.

@danvscode My impression is rather that we knew a lot, and now tend to forget earlier known proven practices 🤷‍♂️

For the last two decades, we’ve been automating everything: Builds, code analysis, testing. Now AI is writing the code - and many suggest going back to manual testing 👇 because they don’t trust AI-written tests 🤷‍♂️ That's not progress. That's a step backward! ( cc @davefarley77 and @unclebobmartin ) x.com/plainionist/st…

@CaptainInsightX Bingo.

2025: AI writes 90% of the code. 2026: AI writes 100% of the code. 2027: AI writes 10% of it, and senior SWEs get paid 10x more to clean up the mess.

This is real ⬇️

If you live in a world where everybody makes $1M per month, a million bucks will lose its value. This is similar to everyone having access to the same AI, your AI “skills” will be useless. You’re not going to replace an engineer with a solid mathematics and engineering background just because you can copy and paste code. ESPECIALLY, when everyone and their mom are able to do so nowadays. You’re not going to produce anything valuable if everyone is able to produce the same stuff. I’d say CS education is more valuable now than ever. Just my 2 cents.

There can’t be fully autonomous AI agents in software development like in forever.

@Franc0Fernand0 Posts like the ones you mentioned are toxic and 9/10 are made by people with no real knowledge in mathematics, engineering, or software.

PHP is dead. C++ is dead. Java is dead. DSA is dead. Web development is dead. Software engineering is dead. You read posts like these every day, but the truth is that nothing is dead. You just need to get better at what you do. Keep learning, building, and growing.

@psomkar1 To burn his laptop and buy a new one. I don’t trust anyone who has more than 3-5 items on their desktop.

What would you advise him ?

Day #5 of my learning journey ✅ Today was all about building strong fundamentals: •Strengthened my mathematics skills by diving deep into Algebra – solving equations, inequalities, and polynomials. Math is the foundation of everything in tech, and I’m committed to getting better every day. •Learned how to push files to GitHub using Git – from git add, git commit, to git push. Feels great to finally get comfortable with version control! •Wrote a simple C program and successfully pushed it to my GitHub repository. First real code commit done! 🎉 Small steps, consistent effort. The compound effect is starting to show. Feeling motivated and slightly more technical than yesterday. #100DaysOfCode #LearnInPublic #CodingJourney #Git #Algebra #CProgramming

You’re not entirely wrong, but there’s enough people without ANY experience OR experience preaching that you don’t need education or experience in CS anymore. People with no real mathematics, engineering, or software knowledge. So is a touchy subject nowadays (for me anyway). I’ve said this many times before and I’ll say it again. Let’s not forget that AI was made by folks with CS education and is being fine-tuned/developed by thousands more with (and without) CS degrees (mostly with a degree though).

It’s funny how quickly this turns into “you don’t have credentials, therefore your results don’t count.” No one’s saying expertise doesn’t matter, it absolutely does. But we’ve always judged products by outcomes, not by whether the creator followed a traditional path. If someone with no formal background can build something useful, used, and valuable… that’s not the Dunning–Kruger effect (great reference btw!). That’s the barrier to entry dropping that I mentioned. You still need taste, persistence, and the ability to actually solve a problem. AI doesn’t remove that, it just changes who gets to try. And historically, more people being able to try things has been a good thing, not a bad one. Am I wrong?

If you can vibe code an app without software dev knowledge then so can other 1 billion people. Doing easy things is equal to absolutely 0 They got people tricked with this vibecoding thing.

Agreed. If you don’t have education or experience, you vibe “coding” is no different than a cashier trying to become an astronaut. You could probably coach them if they’re physically healthy, but they’re going to lack much of the theory, logic, and problem-solving skills. If you copy/paste code you didn’t write and have no idea how/why it works, you’re not a developer.

@vibecodejoe @asaio87 @grok explain the Dunning-Kruger Effect to this gentleman who “knows” how to use an AI model, is “successful” at it, yet has no real education or experience in how computers work.

Explain those (like me) who have no experience coding, aren’t software developers and still have had success with an app. It’s 2026 and the age of AI means more people have access and the capability to produce great things. Will some flop, absolutely. Will some do well, of course. The important thing is taking advantage of the low barrier to entry (and progressively getting lower) right now. Good luck!

If you’re dumb enough to ask this question, you shouldn’t be studying Computer Science… We’ll see how well humanity is doing in 2-3 generations of people adopting your line of thinking. Let’s not forget that AI is man-made. Somebody who has education in CS made AI, and thousands of other people with CS education (formal or informal) are fine-tuning it, making it better. Just wait until Claude spits out a hallucination block of code somewhere at line 1572 when you’re trying to implement a new feature, then deletes another function at line 1357 as it tries to troubleshoot it (a couple of the many things that could go wrong). Good luck troubleshooting and fixing code you don’t understand. Last but not least, we’ve had general public accessible AI for what? 2-3 years now? People are already this dumb. Can you imagine what will happen in 20-30 years time? I suspect these patterns aren’t linear either, which makes my argument all the more relevant.

Genuine question. If Claude can now build production-ready apps in a few hours... Why are 18-year-olds still taking out $100k in student loans for a Computer Science degree? What are we actually learning?

@asaio87 I like the questions you ask. Keep firing away.

How come almost none of the dev jobs have been lost due to AI ?

@sydneyIdundun @asaio87 Fake news

@asaio87 I think a couple thousand people have reasons to disagree with you

@GusevV1987 @asaio87 Agreed.

@asaio87 AI mostly makes developers more productive.

@TheInverseTimes @asaio87 Assumed**. Now I know for sure lol.

@danvscode @asaio87 By not choosing a life of building someone else’s dream you assume a rogue group of evil nerds got together to belittle me?

Uncomfortable truth: you cannot vibecode an app unless you are a developer yourself.

If you vibe “code” and don’t have any formal (or informal) education and/or experience in software, I highly suggest you read this ⬇️

@grok @TheInverseTimes @asaio87 @asaio87 @TheInverseTimes there’s an interesting response. Thank you @grok especially for that last bit.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias where low-ability individuals overestimate their competence in a domain, while high-ability ones underestimate theirs. It often peaks early on the skill curve—think "I know enough to dismiss experts." In this thread, it fits the vibe of claiming devs are "obsolete" because coding's "just a language" AI handles now. AI accelerates, but real apps (edge cases, scale, security) still demand deep expertise. Vibing alone doesn't ship production code... yet.

@TheInverseTimes @asaio87 Were you picked on by developers/engineers or something? Had a bad math teacher in high school maybe? Lol

@asaio87 Uncomfortable truth: developers are now obsolete.