This is going to catch some heat, but what if the most important professional “developer skill” to learn or improve is how to effectively use coding agents?
I saw something similar in ML when neural nets came around. The whole “stack moar layerz” thing is a meme, but it was a real sentiment about newer entrants into the field not learning anything about ML theory or best practices. As it turns out, neural nets “won” and using them effectively required development and acquisition of some new domain knowledge and best practices. And the kids are ok. The people who scoffed at neural nets and never got up to speed not so much.
Edit: as an aside, I have learned plenty from reviewing coding agent generated implementations of various algorithms or methods.
I saw something similar in ML when neural nets came around. The whole “stack moar layerz” thing is a meme, but it was a real sentiment about newer entrants into the field not learning anything about ML theory or best practices. As it turns out, neural nets “won” and using them effectively required development and acquisition of some new domain knowledge and best practices. And the kids are ok. The people who scoffed at neural nets and never got up to speed not so much.
Edit: as an aside, I have learned plenty from reviewing coding agent generated implementations of various algorithms or methods.