Here’s something that’s been sitting on my mind. We’re in a moment where a lot of people are saying learning to code is no longer necessary. That AI can just write the code for you. And on the surface, that argument sounds reasonable. But I think it misses something fundamental about how software actually works. The abstraction stack has always looked like this: Natural Language → [AI translates] → High-Level Code (Python, JS) → [compiler] → Assembly → [CPU] → Machine Language This is the same pattern software has always followed. We went from punching machine code, to assembly, to C, to Python. Every layer up was an abstraction that made the layer below more accessible. AI is simply the next one. You can now describe intent in plain English and get working code back. That’s powerful. That’s genuinely a shift. But here’s what hasn’t changed: The AI still produces code. That code still runs on software engineering principles, and neglecting those principles is just like pushing code that’s never been vetted. Same same, but different. If you can’t read what it produces, you can’t evaluate it, debug it, extend it, or know when it’s wrong. Think about it you wouldn’t trust a translator if you had no idea what language they were translating into. Same logic applies here. And here’s the honest truth: learning a programming language alone isn’t enough right now, because AI is doing that part better by the day. What actually matters is the engineering fundamentals. They teach you how to think in terms of logic, data flow, state, and structure. Those aren’t things AI removes from the equation they’re the things that help you direct AI well. So do we still need to learn to code? My take: software engineering fundamentals are non-negotiable. Understanding how code works, what a function does, what an API call is, how data moves through a system these matter more now, not less. You need to be a good reviewer of AI output. And knowing the fundamentals lets you govern what AI writes and how it writes it throughout the entire development process.

Are you using desktop or browser? both? Free or a paid version? What have you used it for? I’ll go first….