Google Research Chief Says Learning To Code 'as Important as Ever' (businessinsider.com)
- Reference: 0175451053
- News link: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/11/11/1735220/google-research-chief-says-learning-to-code-as-important-as-ever
- Source link: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-research-head-career-advice-learn-to-code-2024-11
The Google executive, who also serves as a company VP, acknowledged that junior professionals have faced challenges gaining experience as AI handles entry-level tasks. Google has launched initiatives to support early-career employees through this transition. Matias compared coding literacy to basic mathematics, arguing it provides crucial understanding of technology regardless of career path.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-research-head-career-advice-learn-to-code-2024-11
[2] https://developers.slashdot.org/story/24/10/29/2223255/more-than-a-quarter-of-new-code-at-google-is-generated-by-ai
Carpenter praises hammer utility (Score:4, Insightful)
Coding is great for teaching project management, task ordering, how to dissect a problem into solvable components, etc. it's not the only way to learn those things.
I think coding's valuable and should be encouraged, but it is not something we need to force universally.
Better life skills to teach (Score:2)
Agree 100%. We need to teach people basic life skills first instead of jumping to learning to code.
- Compound interest and its long term effects of borrowing too much.
- Cost benefit analysis of getting a college degree(s) , effect of borrowing money to do so (compound interest) and long term financial impacts
- Balancing a checking account / financial account
- Making and following a monthly budget
- How to cook (something easy) from scratch - following instructions
- Budgeting for food, making a grocery list,
Re: (Score:2)
Damn, that's a good list!
I'd like to slightly disagree with planning meals for a week. My modus operandi when it comes to shopping for groceries and planning for meals is go to the store and see what's on sale, and get those items and make something with them. For instance, it's been a whole month that I haven't had steak because rireye hasn't been on sale. Meanwhile last Friday they had ribs for $1.99/pound. So I cooked 3 slabs for 5 adults and half of it is still in the fridge. Total cost for the mea
Adding a few more life skills (Score:2)
- A productive skill not using computers, electricity or expensive power tools. Working with hands, planning it out, having the patience to follow through
- How to incorporate 10 minutes of basic exercise into your day without require electronics, entertainment, or other distractions - walking, stretching, free exercise
- How to organize and pack a suitcase with 1 week's clothes for a visit to a place moderately cooler or hotter than where you live without buying new clothes
- How to estimate distance, scale,
Re: (Score:2)
The general idea is that most basic life skill tasks would be done without the person 'needing' to be stimulated via music headphones, video in the background, etc.
Probably the largest life skill missing in people today, existing with periods of low stimulation.
Re: (Score:2)
I think too many people do it because they think it pays well, which it certainly can, but when they're that kind of person they tend to suck at it and likely end up working for some kind of code mill, the pay is kind of meh (maybe $50-$70kish) and they'll probably hate life.
Wrong problem (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure why people thing coders spend their time typing. Sure, there's a bit of that, but mostly they spend time thinking and designing. Typing is the relatively small but relaxing part of the job.
Re: (Score:2)
I rarely code these days, but when I did my best stuff happened while I was driving between sites. The tricky bit was remembering what I'd thought of until it was safe to implement or at least take notes.
Re: (Score:2)
My best work often occurred in beach parking lots. I'd take a stack of papers, blank pads, and pencils with me. Salt air, surf sound, and no yammering or ringing telephones, helped a lot. "Pictures with circles and arrows", "and a paragraph on the back" after returning to a keyboard.
Wrong method. (Score:1)
You all sound like frauds. My best ideas have happened when I had my brain engaged and I was sitting in front of the system coding my ass off. Why? Because I've spent fucking man-years doing that. Practice makes perfect, not decompressing on the beach or some other time-wasting horseshit. One learns and improves by doing . I have the code, the finished applications, and the resume to prove it: not a bunch of yellow legal pads with dumb looking drawings.
Re: (Score:2)
The most elegant solutions to problems I have come up with have been either the result of rolling in bed, trying to fall asleep, or towards the morning when I've woken up with an epiphany. It's like the harder I work at a problem, the more elusive it is. Maybe it's the lack of distractions around sleep.
Re: (Score:2)
For decades I thought it would be fun to keep a notebook on my night table to scratch down those 'middle of the night' epiphanies. I never did.
But now I have my phone there, charging. I've used it a few times to make notes sufficient to remind myself later and revive the idea for further work.
I recommend it. I have no idea how many decent ideas I let wither and just forgot about them because I didn't take a simple note.
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect this is more of a "different focus" thing. When most engineering fields got autoCAD in 1980s and early 1990s, it basically removed the need for those who knew how to draw and visualize things on paper really well. Instead of focused on actual thinking and designing. But engineering jobs had a lot of people who were great at drawing and poor at thinking and designing. Because the job used to need a lot of drawing and much less thinking and designing pre-autoCAD, and almost no drawing and a lot of t
Re: (Score:3)
"And after automation of coding, it's the software architects that will be of paramount importance, while people who're really good at writing code will go the way of the people who were really good at drawing."
A false and ridiculous dichotomy based on the assumption that "coding" is simple enough to be automated. Design and coding are coupled, "software architect" and "really good at writing code" are not orthogonal activities, quite the opposite.
The vast majority of coding is fixed function, limited reso
Re: (Score:2)
The vast majority of coding is fixed function, limited resource embedded programming.
Source please?
Re: (Score:2)
> "And after automation of coding, it's the software architects that will be of paramount importance, while people who're really good at writing code will go the way of the people who were really good at drawing."
> A false and ridiculous dichotomy based on the assumption that "coding" is simple enough to be automated. Design and coding are coupled, "software architect" and "really good at writing code" are not orthogonal activities, quite the opposite.
> The vast majority of coding is fixed function, limited resource embedded programming. People who make specious comments like this one do not even understand what programmers do.
I'd like to know far more since I'm not sure where the time and cost savings are supposed to come from involving humans. I generally spend somewhat more time figuring out somebody else's code than I do thinking up my own (but that depends on prone to code obfuscation the original coder was). On top of that I spend about as much time testing my own code as I do writing it. It seems far more efficient and cost saving to just fire all the humans and train AIs to review the code. That should be (a) trivially ea
Re: (Score:1)
> That should be [...]
So you wrote all that tripe without even knowing what is . Just use the tools (they are mostly free) and find out for yourself how viable AI code reviews are. Right now the state of the art is that AI cannot write more than about 30 lines of code without major bugs or going in some completely fucked up direction that'll need refactoring. This is the case with ChatGPT, Claude, CoPilot, and Grok. If you tried to use the for code reviews they might be helpful, but not as much as an experienced coder because whe
Re: (Score:1)
> A false and ridiculous dichotomy
Quite right. It also sounds like he's lying. I have several traditional engineers in my family who are experts with AutoCAD and, while automation is better and AutoLISP can help, it's not some panacea that eliminated all design skills. He sounds like he's just making shit up to me.
Re: (Score:1)
This is why I suggested people look up how people used to build things like airplanes, power plants and so on from hand made drawings. Ever tried routing thousands of kilometers of pipes of various diameters, grades, pressures, vibration levels and so on? Every power plant needs this done. Every single one. And a single minor mistake in connecting can result in entire power plant needing massive corrective work of tearing out hundreds of kilometers of piping and replacing it with newly routed one. And this
Re: (Score:2)
> I suspect this is more of a "different focus" thing. When most engineering fields got autoCAD in 1980s and early 1990s, it basically removed the need for those who knew how to draw and visualize things on paper really well. Instead of focused on actual thinking and designing. But engineering jobs had a lot of people who were great at drawing and poor at thinking and designing. Because the job used to need a lot of drawing and much less thinking and designing pre-autoCAD, and almost no drawing and a lot of thinking and designing post-autoCAD.
> Same thing will apply here. Today there are a lot of people who are really good at coding. There are far less people who can do proper software architecting at large scale, because writing the code is so fundamentally important. Just as knowing how to draw your design on paper was so fundamentally important for engineering pre-autoCAD and so much fewer people did the actual large scale design work.
> And after automation of coding, it's the software architects that will be of paramount importance, while people who're really good at writing code will go the way of the people who were really good at drawing. Either re-learn to the new focus or change profession.
I don't think this is gonna work the way you think it is. The real dream is to kill-off software engineering as a profession and have the entire process automated from the moment some manager day-dreams pie-in-the-sky bullshit to the moment that day dream is sorta/kinda running like he imagined, bugs and all. They'll spin up another AI to deal with bug checking / testing. The upper management has been promised that software development will be as simple as sitting at a prompt and saying, "I need gobbledegoo
Re: (Score:1)
You're right. He's dreaming. It's a dream of every manager since programming was something they had to start paying for. I've seen it with IDEs, CASE method, Indian offshoring, etc... Every 10 years there is some technology or phenomenon that's supposed to make programming easy for everyone and provide a silver bullet to kill the need for heavily trained expert coders. It's never worked and I don't expect AI to change that. I use it all the time and it's still terrible at writing code that works past about
Re: (Score:1)
You can only believe this if you shove your head in the sand and pretend that autoCAD isn't real, and hasn't done exactly what I described decades ago.
Best part? Doesn't matter if you believe it or not, or even believe it and manage to get it banned. PRC is going all in on automating this because of their upcoming population crash. If we don't get it done, they will. And whoever gets this done will be so much more effective, that struggle for supremacy will look a lot like USSR vs US in 1980s.
Because that w
What I'm hearing when I read this (Score:2)
"We need an excess supply of students who want to become developers for us, so that we can hire them for low pay, and have them compete against each other in an AI-dominated workplace to increase the reliability of the tools that will eventually make redundant what few openings for humans remain."
All the C-level execs are salivating at the prospect of making even more profit by cutting as many developers as they can. If nobody wants to become a developer because of this, if nobody wants to learn how to cod
Re: (Score:2)
Or course you think this. Only since AI has management seriously thought about reducing tech workforce.
Well, ok, not since 2000.
Re: (Score:2)
You're probably right, but if so they're being short-sighted. By the time today's high school students graduate from college, coding won't be done...at least in the sense it is today. Actually, I stopped recommending that people train to become programmers about a decade ago. The writing was on the wall. We'll still need programmers for a few more years, but in decreasing numbers.
When I started programming, every company with access to a computer had a staff of programmers. These days, nowhere near as
Re: (Score:1)
I'd advise younger folks to go into business, the trades, or become a doctor. As for people like me, there was never any choice. I was always going to code and making a living was just incidental. I do it because love doing it and that love is what gives me an edge over people who just go to school and learn it because someone told them it was a good idea. I have only been more sought after and better paid since AI entered the scene.
Re: What I'm hearing when I read this (Score:1)
25% is probably the tip of the iceberg. Real smart developers will find ways to use AI to become 5x or 10x more productive. But as they are smart they will not show that, they will just keep developing at the same productivity rate and use the extra spare time to productize their insights then after a year or so suddenly leave and start their own company.
Re: (Score:2)
> "We need an excess supply of students who want to become developers for us, so that we can hire them for low pay, and have them compete against each other in an AI-dominated workplace to increase the reliability of the tools that will eventually make redundant what few openings for humans remain."
> All the C-level execs are salivating at the prospect of making even more profit by cutting as many developers as they can. If nobody wants to become a developer because of this, if nobody wants to learn how to code anymore because AI has taken their jobs, they have only themselves to blame. Supply and demand work both ways but greedy capitalist fuckwads always plead and whine when the same system that made them billionaires end up working against their interests.
The AI prophets are pushing HARD to make sure all current gen developers are using AI tools. Management believes the hype, that we have to use AI all the time or we're falling behind. Right now, using AI puts us behind. But, it's all good, because we're training our replacements. One day, or so the AI prophets have promised, we'll be able to use the AI software development cycle sans-humans, and all those wasted man-hours will have paid off for the corporations! IMAGINE NO MORE HUMANS IN THE SOFTWARE DEVELO
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe so, but if you're any good at what you do, you have very little to worry about. The average student in a music or art class never really learns to sing or paint, but those classes are still valuable in providing exposure. The average student that takes a coding class will not ever be good at coding, but the exposure might still do them some good.
Code GAN (Score:2)
Just get one AI to review the other AI's code.
And fire everybody.
Will happen, quality and value to customers are standing in the way of profits.
Re: (Score:2)
It's called agents. One agent writes, one critiques, one corrects. They may be different LLM or the same, but they do different roles.
The success of this varies, but it is better than having just one role.
growing role? (Score:4, Insightful)
"...despite AI's growing role in software development."
Who says there's a growing role? AI companies?
Re: (Score:2)
Pichai was telling us last week that about 25% of the code produced now in Google, is generated AI. Says article posted here on /.
Soon, 50%, then 100%.
Re: (Score:1)
I suspect he's utterly full of shit, too. He's probably counting CSS as "code" and fabricating the rest. Google has been around for over 20 years. You believe they went back and re-coded everything so they could pack in 30% "AI code" just so he could say that? No, he's a CEO and he just made that shit up on his own. I call bullshit. Yes, we all use AI sometimes to help spot a problem or review a snippet. I also use it sometimes to help build a working model or document existing code. However, it's nowhere n
Yes, but... (Score:2)
...talent is real and it takes a special kind of mind to be good at programming.
While I agree that learning the basics of software is a useful way to train the mind, many untalented students will be very disappointed when they try to find work.
Part of being a successful programmer is constantly learning. Knowledge gets stale in this field very fast.
In order to succeed in the future world of software, it will be necessary to learn the new tools as they are developed.
And no, AI will not magically convert vagu
It has gotten harder to do so, though (Score:2)
Too many students required to learn coding let ChatGPT and the like do the thinking for them. That way they never get the exercise needed. And as soon as they enter a range of tasks were ChatGPT does not cut it anymore or requires close supervision, these students are completely lost. Not good. Obviously, there are still some that get it and do just fine. But many are struggling more now than before. Yes, I have seen this first-hand in a class I teach.
Well of course (Score:2)
I mean although this has been promised for decades now, it's actually still possible that you will want to use a computer. If you cannot program your computer, you are severely limited with what you can do with a computer. This may not have been a problem in the past, but today manufacturers of computer system often have to shame in exploiting their users for their own capital gains.
If you can't program your computer you are then doomed to work for the company by wasting your time doom-scrolling in the hope
Learning to code or learning to develop? (Score:2)
BIG difference. Anyone can learn to read code, but actual system design and implementation is true coding.
It's like learning to read vs learning to write an essay with a coherent collection of thoughts.
Or is 'learning to code' just the new data entry clerk?
Better (Score:2)
to learn how to think and reason.
ABC: Always Be Coding. (Score:1)
That's all fine and good but only actually coding is going to significantly help you get better. Sure there are foundational skills, but they aren't going to take you to the level you need to be to be a professional in most cases. My advice is to practice, code, and grind. Don't waste time trying to have AI do everything for you and just use it for the areas it's good for. Stay coding. Stay on a project or three all the time. Don't listen to assholes telling you this or that will make you a better coder or
What has google done the past decade? (Score:2)
There is nothing of value that Google has launched in the past decade. Just money grabs, ways to make the web more annoying, and clones of stuff others were doing.
Would we even notice or care if Google stopped delivering anything?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know. They might not be coming out with amazing new stuff, but that's not the same as doing nothing.
GMail's spam filter is still an order of magnitude better than any other.
Google Maps is still significantly superior to any other navigation software.
Android continues to be refined and improved.
These things don't happen when a company just sits on their hands.
Steals Code, Writes Pink Slips, Wants more Code (Score:2)
AI coding is a like a zombie movie, gone wrong.
as ever? (Score:2)
"Important as ever" is a good way to put it. I.e. not really all that important for the masses.
company that benefits from cheaper labor wants.... (Score:2)
company that benefits from cheaper labor advocates for more people to be trained to do said job.... while constantly pushing for software to replace said workers.
Code reviews (Score:4, Insightful)
Ask any software engineer whether they'd rather write code, or do code reviews.
So Google's master plan is to have AI do the fun stuff, and humans do the drudge work? Good luck with that.
Re: (Score:2)
That's how reality has worked so far with all engineering jobs though. Google what mechanical engineers, electrical engineers etc did in 1970s. Then google what they did in 2000s.
This has simply now come for software engineers. We are going from our equivalent of hand drawing everything from scratch to giving autoCAD directions and vetting the results.
Re: (Score:2)
> Ask any software engineer whether they'd rather write code, or do code reviews.
> So Google's master plan is to have AI do the fun stuff, and humans do the drudge work? Good luck with that.
This is the joy of automation. Take away the fun bits and leave humans to do the tedium and deal with the business bullshit. God, what a glorious future.
Re: (Score:2)
No, as a developer, I do *not* want to do the grunt work. This is the stuff AI takes off my hands, not the fun stuff (which is seeing the software take shape as I write it), but the annoying stuff
As an example, I wanted to improve a search algorithm by using a Lowenstein distance calculation. I had no wish to actually write the function to perform the calculation, I was quite happy that Copilot could write it for me, and I plug it in to the larger system.
This is the stuff AI will actually take on, the grunt