Deep knowledge of systems, engineering, and programming will be in demand for as long as technology exists. Relying on AI without that foundation is like trying to advance material science without understanding chemistry, or pioneering new techniques in biology without grasping the underlying mechanisms. The tools change, the need for real understanding doesn't.
Remember Deep Thought, the greatest computer ever built that spent 7.5 million years computing the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything? The answer was 42. Perfectly correct, utterly useless because nobody understood the question they were asking. That's what happens when you hand everything to a machine without understanding the problem yourself. AI can give you correct answers all day long, but if you don't understand what you're building, you'll end up just like the people of Magrathea, staring at 42 and wondering what to do with it.
And if you need a role model, Neo wasn't chosen because he could dodge bullets. He was a developer first. He understood the system before he could bend it. There's a reason The One was a programmer, not a prompt engineer.
antoniokokoshka•1h ago
Giving someone AI and convincing them that they are now an engineer is just asking for a huge disaster.
As an experienced engineer and architect, I know that achieving something that works is not just about writing code, but about understanding the issue and understanding which decisions will cause damage in the long term and what will be appropriate for the solution to be flexible, not prone to errors, and capable of development.
I tell AI what to do, because otherwise it does something else, not what it should be doing, and it will never do what I want. Ask someone to paint something for you, and they will paint it, but it will not be what you wanted or imagined.