Explicit programmers are needed because the general public has failed to learn programming. Hiding the complexity behind nice interfaces makes it actually more difficult to understand programming.

This comes all from programmers using programs to abstract programming away.

What if the 2030s change the approach and use AI to teach everybody how to program?

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

the general public has failed to learn programming

That's like saying that the general public has failed to learn surgery, or the general public has failed to learn chemical engineering.

There are certain things that it just doesn't make sense for the general public to ever be expected to learn.

[–] plyth@feddit.org 2 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

People bake and learn basic chemistry. The baseline of general programming knowledge could be more than zero. It's a fundamental part of our society.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago

Baking is not chemical engineering. Chemical engineering doesn't even have much to do with chemistry. It's mostly about temperatures and flow rates, pressure, etc.

Saying "the baseline of programming knowledge could be more than zero" is meaningless. The baseline of chemical engineering knowledge could also be more than zero. It's also a fundamental part of our society. But, the average person doesn't need to know how to program, just like the average person doesn't need to know how to design a refinery.

People do learn some basic computer skills. They should learn more. They should know about files. They should know how to back up their data. And, more importantly, they should learn how to restore data from a backup after something goes wrong. They should know how to properly update their devices, how to tell if their devices are infected, and the basics of managing a home network. They sometimes learn how to do basic functions in excel spreadsheets. That's about as far as they do, or should need to go in programming / IT. Beyond that, why should the average person need to know how to do recursion, or how loops work?

[–] alternategait@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

If you look at "I didn't have eggs" you'll quickly figure out that very few people are learning chemistry from baking/cooking.

I memorized by rote the chord progressions in my favorite style of music. This does not mean I understand music theory at all.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I I I I IV IV I I V IV I IV

[–] alternategait@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

You nailed it ok.

Worse than that, I don't even really know how they relate to each other, I just know "key of C" means C, F, G. I actually even went so far as to write each major key progression down with my cheater chord pics.

[–] MysticKetchup@lemmy.world 5 points 7 hours ago

What if the 2030s change the approach and use AI to teach everybody how to program?

What does AI (already known to be an unreliable bullshitting machine) provide to students that existing tutorials, videos and teachers do not already?

Also the companies investing in AI are not trying to teach their workers to be better, they're trying to make more profit by replacing workers or artificially increasing their outputs. Teaching people to program is not what they care about

[–] Gremour@lemmy.world 13 points 12 hours ago

Hiding the complexity behind nice interfaces makes it actually more difficult to understand programming.

This is a very important point, that most of my colleagues with OOP background seem to miss. They build a bunch of abstractions and then say it's easy, because we have one liner in calling code, pretending that the rest of the code doesn't exist. Oh yes, it certainly exists! And needs to be maintained, too.

[–] Luccus@feddit.org 11 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

I find this to be a real problem with visual shaders. I know how certain mathematical formulas affect an input, but instead of just pressing the Enter key and writing it down, I now have to move blocks around, and oh no, they were nicely logically aligned, now one block is covering another block, oh noo, what a mess and the auto sort thing messes up the logical sorting completly… well too bad.

And I find that most solutions on the internet utilizing the visual editor tend to forget that previous outputs can be reused. Getting normals from already generated noise without resampling somehow becomes arcane knowledge.

Edit: words.