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The way I read OP's comment was more about quality rather than quantity. Put another way, I'd say that the right amount of people who should be learning that s

The way I read OP's comment was more about quality rather than quantity. Put another way, I'd say that the right amount of people who should be learning that skill is probably zero. "Learning to write AI prompts" is a skill that only exists because AI hasn't evolved enough yet; in another 10-25 years, "learning to write AI prompts" will just be equivalent to "communicating clearly." And, yes, thinking and communicating clearly are valuable skills that everyone should learn, but that's just the point — people investing time in the "writing AI prompts" skill now aren't learning that. They're just learning to string random adjectives together, along with (at best) a slight bit of the iterative never-give-up spirit that comes with poking an inscrutable pile of matrices until it does what you want. [1] [1]: https://xkcd.com/1838/ https://xkcd.com/1838/

jvalencia 4y ago
I think the lament is that if people do not learn the logical side of things, they are unable to figure out how to reason about issues and errors. They are unable to easily go deep into topics like computer science.
- serf 4y ago
  Do you think that the lament is wrong? I feel as if it stands to reason that someone without practice in common topics should do worse at a subject when encountered professionally or academically; the base mathematical principles behind programming like lambda calculus and the principles of recursion and boolean logic haven't changed, they've been masked. I feel like the use of many AI sub-systems really just trains someone in the use of that sub-system rather than any of the underlying principles. This feels obvious to me, am I missing something? Also : I don't think that specific 'AI sub-system' training is useless, that's the way our world is heading.. I just also happen to believe that it hides trees.
  - Espressosaurus 4y ago
    It feels like the app-ification programming. It's more accessible but leaves the users less able to deal with things it can't solve and completely incompetent to debug them. Hopefully I'm wrong. Also hopefully it doesn't put me out of a job in 5-10 years.
  - BirAdam 4y ago
    This is normal. The industry has many times more front-end web developers than full stack. It has many more full-stack developers than systems programmers. It has many more systems programmers than chip engineers. Each layer of abstraction makes things easier to learn (or at least more visible and therefore approachable) and therefore makes the number of people trained in any given discipline higher.

jvalencia 4y ago

I think the lament is that if people do not learn the logical side of things, they are unable to figure out how to reason about issues and errors. They are unable to easily go deep into topics like computer science.

serf 4y ago
Do you think that the lament is wrong? I feel as if it stands to reason that someone without practice in common topics should do worse at a subject when encountered professionally or academically; the base mathematical principles behind programming like lambda calculus and the principles of recursion and boolean logic haven't changed, they've been masked. I feel like the use of many AI sub-systems really just trains someone in the use of that sub-system rather than any of the underlying principles. This feels obvious to me, am I missing something? Also : I don't think that specific 'AI sub-system' training is useless, that's the way our world is heading.. I just also happen to believe that it hides trees.
- Espressosaurus 4y ago
  It feels like the app-ification programming. It's more accessible but leaves the users less able to deal with things it can't solve and completely incompetent to debug them. Hopefully I'm wrong. Also hopefully it doesn't put me out of a job in 5-10 years.
- BirAdam 4y ago
  This is normal. The industry has many times more front-end web developers than full stack. It has many more full-stack developers than systems programmers. It has many more systems programmers than chip engineers. Each layer of abstraction makes things easier to learn (or at least more visible and therefore approachable) and therefore makes the number of people trained in any given discipline higher.