Don’t learn to code: Nvidia’s founder Jensen Huang advises a different career path

Founder of company which makes major revenue by selling GPUs for machine learning says machine learning is good.

Don't listen to electrical engineers, unless they are warning against licking a battery.

Do listen to whatever your gut says you want to do for a career.

Do learn to use AI in some fashion, even if for shits and giggles.

I worry for the future generations that cant debug cos they dont know how to program and just use ai.

As a developer building on top of LLMs, my advice is to learn programming architecture. There's a shit ton of work that needs to be done to get this unpredictable non deterministic tech to work safely and accurately. This is like saying get out of tech right before the Internet boom. The hardest part of programming isn't writing low level functions, it's architecting complex systems while keeping them robust, maintainable, and expandable. By the time an AI can do that, all office jobs are obsolete. AIs will be able to replace CEOs before they can replace system architects. Programmers won't go away, they'll just have less busywork to do and instead need to work at a higher level, but the complexity of those higher level requirements are about to explode and we will need LLMs to do the simpler tasks with our oversight to make sure it gets integrated correctly.

I also recommend still learning the fundamentals, just maybe not as deeply as you needed to. Knowing how things work under the hood still helps immensely with debugging and creating better more efficient architectures even at a high level.

I will say, I do know developers that specialized in algorithms who are feeling pretty lost right now, but they're perfectly capable of adapting their skills to the new paradigm, their issue is more of a personal issue of deciding what they want to do since they were passionate about algorithms.

Having used Chat GPT to try to find solutions to software development challenges, I don't think programmers will be at that much risk from AI for at least a decade.

Generative AI is great at many things, including assistance with basic software development tasks (like spinning up blueprints for unit tests). And it can be helpful filling in code gaps when provided with a very specific prompt... sometimes. But it is not great at figuring out the nuances of even mildly complex business logic.

This overglorified snake oil salesman is scared.

Anyone who understands how these models works can see plain as day we have reached peak LLM. Its enshitifying on itself and we are seeing its decline in real time with quality of generated content. Dont believe me? Go follow some senior engineers.

Lmao do the opposite of whatever this guy says, he only wants his 2 trillion dollar stockmarket bubble not to burst

the day programming is fully automated, so will other jobs.

maybe it'd make more sense if he suggested to be a blue collar worker instead.

You remember when everyone was predicting that we are a couple of years away from fully self-driving cars. I think we are now a full decade after those couple of years and I don't see any fully self driving car on the road taking over human drivers.

We are now at the honeymoon of the AI and I can only assume that there would be a huge downward correction of some AI stocks who are overvalued and overhyped, like NVIDIA. They are like crypto stock, now on the moon tomorrow, back to Earth.

Well. That's stupid.

Large language models are amazingly useful coding tools. They help developers write code more quickly.

They are nowhere near being able to actually replace developers. They can't know when their code doesn't make sense (which is frequently). They can't know where to integrate new code into an existing application. They can't debug themselves.

Try to replace developers with an MBA using a large language model AI, and once the MBA fails, you'll be hiring developers again - if your business still exists.

Every few years, something comes along that makes bean counters who are desperate to cut costs, and scammers who are desperate for a few bucks, declare that programming is over. Code will self-write! No-code editors will replace developers! LLMs can do it all!

No. No, they can't. They're just another tool in the developer toolbox.

It's just as crazy as saying "We don't need math, because every problem can be described using human language".

In other words, that might be true as long as your problem is not complex enough to be able to be understood using human language.

You want to solve a real problem? It's way more complex with so many moving parts you can't just take LLM to solve it, because that takes an actual understanding of a problem.

This seems as wise as Bill Gates claiming 4MB of ram is all you'll ever need back on 98 🙄

I don't think he's seen the absolute fucking drivel that most developers have been given as software specs before now.

Most people don't even know what they want, let alone be able to describe it. I've often been given a mountain of stuff, only to go back and forth with the customer to figure out what problem they're actually trying to solve, and then do it in like 3 lines of code in a way that doesn't break everything else, or tie a maintenance albatross around my neck for the next ten years.

I don't see how it would be possible to completely replace programmers. The reason we have programming languages instead of using natural language is that the latter has ambiguities. If you start having to describe your software's behaviour in natural language, then one of three things can happen:

1. either this new natural programming language has to make assumptions about what you intend, and thus will only be capable of outputting a certain class of software (i.e. you can't actually create anything new),
2. or you need to learn a new way of describing things unambiguously, and now you're back to programming but with a new language,
3. or you spend forever going back and forth with the generator until it gives you the output you want, and this would take a lot longer to do than just having an experienced programmer write it.

I think this is bullshit regarding LLMs, but making and using generative tools more and more high-level and understandable for users is a good thing.

Like various visual programming means, where you sketch something working via connected blocks (like PureData for sounds), or in Matlab I think one can use such constructors to generate code for specific controllers involved in the scheme, or like LabView.

Or like HyperCard.

Not that anybody should stop learning anything. There's a niche for every way to do things.

I just like that class of programs.

Jensen fucking Huang is a piece of shit and choke full of it too

Actually, AI can replace this dick at a fraction of the cost instead of replacing developers. Bring out the guillotine mfs

Doubt

I can kind of see his point, but the things he is suggesting instead (biology, chemistry, finance) don't make sense for several reasons.

Besides the obvious "why couldn't AI just replace those people too" (even though it may take an extra few years), there is also a question of how many people can actually have a deep enough expertise to make meaningful contributions there - if we're talking about a massive increase of the amount of people going into those fields.

I mean why have a CS degree when an AI subscription costs $30/month?

/s

After using co pilot and other AI code tools it's obvious to see the limitations of it, programming is a lot more than just writing "ok" code

I think the Jensen quote loosley implies we don't need to learn a programming language but the logic was flimsy. Same goes for the author as they backtrack a few times. Not a great article in my opinion.

There’s good money to be made in selling leather jackets.

It's not really about the coding, it's about the process of solving the problem. And ai is very far away from being able to do that. The language you learn to code in is probably not the one you will use much of you life. It will just get replaced by which ai you will use to code.

So TIL 'prompt engineer' is now a thing. We're doomed, aren't we?

Don't tell me what to do. Going to spend more time learning to code from now on, thanks.

Just because you're the CEO of a big company, it doesn't mean you know what you're talking about. In this case it's clear he doesn't. You may say "but the company makes a lot of money" and that's not a point in his favor either, as this is a clear example of survivor bias. Coding is going nowhere and the companies laying off people are just a proof CEOs don't know what they are doing.

For years there have been open source solutions ready for basically any purpose, and if that has not made coders useless, nothing will. Maybe they will change designation, but people that understand what's going on at a technical level will always be necessary.

There have been some situations in the past few years that made the situation less clear-cut, but that doesn't make coders optional.

"Time to pull the ladder up!"

Nvidia is such a stupid fucking company. It's just slapping different designs onto TSMC chips. All our "chip companies" are like this. In the long run they are all going to get smoked. I won't tell you by whom. You shouldn't need a reminder.

Good thing I'm majoring in computer engineering instead of computer science. I have a backdoor through electrical engineering.

Funny enough we now have prompt engineering which is specifically for talking to ai.

I'm so sick of the hyper push for specialization, it may be efficient but it's soul crushing. IDK maybe it's ADHD but I'd rather not do any one thing for more than 2 weeks.

"I'm coming fo dat ass, Jensen"

Lisa Su, probably.