17 Replies to ““Learn to Code””

  1. AI isn’t coming for coders. AI in its current form is a hype bubble, just like Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 were. There will be some gains; AI will replace office and customer service drones that should have been replaced by a chatbot a decade ago anyway. It’s good at generating boilerplate code, but we’ve had dynamic code generators forever.

    Real applications that perform a real service? Not going to happen.

    1. Well thank God for that, all those Uranalists have something to fall back on. AI will start eating away at the soft office jobs and call centers but Mike is right, the Trades will probably be the least affected and with the shortage their wages will have to go up. An HVAC Journeyman, after the 4 year apprenticeship program, should be making 6 figures easily and would be qualified to go out on his own and start up a company. This what Forbes thinks;
      “Jobs that are most at risk from AI include those involving repetitive tasks, such as administrative support, data entry, and basic customer service roles. Additionally, positions in fields like bookkeeping and financial reporting are also highly susceptible to automation.”
      The good thing is that AI can now write all those tedious essays and doctoral thesis’s for the college crowd, no need to think or learn anything, AI can do that for you.

    2. Agreed. I am using ChatGPT to produce what are often barely functional drafts of gCode for operating CNC machines. They are useful but often only starting points.

  2. There are A LOT of new ads on the Kijiji and FBMP pages for some trades, looking to come to your house and conduct whatever business services you may need, all at at a cut rate.

    Which, I’m not toooooooo… upset about, it leaves work for those who actually are licensed in their trade, have taken school in Canada for their trade, do have an interprovincial “Red Seal” card indicating this, can do the math….

    So, if we don’t get the cut rate work, we’ll get the retro work the second time ’round when it all goes sideways, and no, there’ll be no discount for removing the work paid to your Somalian or Afghani gas fitter.
    I worked with a couple of guys from Afghanistan. 2 were educated in Canada after high school and are fine J-Men. Another worked as an HVAC guy in Regina and said he’ll never go to school as he never learned any math.

    Your results may vary, but Ai isn’t going to write those pipes into being, they aren’t going to repair your leaks, and it isn’t going to warm your house or water when ignoring a sacrificial rod in a water heater and is left in place for 20 years in Calgary, or for 4 years in Regina… (kinda hard water there folks).

    I watched this from Mike Rowe yesterday and thought, “maybe someone will see this and decide to actually take this to heart”
    Remember, Winston Churchill kept his bricklaying ticket all the days of his life, for a very good reason.

  3. AI should be very good at customer service. All it has to do is delay, delay, run around, run around, and keep repeating; interspersed with attempts to up sell.

  4. I love this. The Navy is complaining it can’t get welders and pipefitters?

    PAY! THEM! MONEY!!!!!

    Gee whiz kids, you offer to pay a guy -money- to weld stuff, he will go and get the training on his own. A good welder should make 6 figures. You do that, and you will have enough welders.

    But they don’t do that. They offer $80K a year, and then complain that the workers of the world are not scrambling over each other to take it. You can’t even own a house on $80K. That’s live-alone-in-your-car money these days.

      1. I recently attended my son’s convocation at the University of Alberta. He received his Master’s degree in education. The ceremony was combined with those receiving their bachelor’s degrees. I knew there wouldn’t be many males, so I decided to count them. Of the ~600ish graduated, exactly 50 were males. Not surprisingly, I lost count how many of the females minored in “women’s studies” or some other form of nonsense also ending in “studies”. Surveys show a 60/40 even up to 70/30 split of female University graduates over males. So if the boys are avoiding universities, I hope at least that their attending 2 year studies at technical colleges. Either that or they are the ones competing with “new Canadians” for entry level drone work. If there’s such a shortage of trades, those males not pursuing post secondary must be doing something else. They’re not all working for government, because I’m sure the females outnumber the males there as well. I think another factor may be the fact that the average union of the opposite sex couples are only producing 1.7 to 2.1 children, not to mention the spike in those checking “other” on the pick one gender portion of their job application form.

  5. I agree that AI is coming for the coders. BTW there are 2 types of coders. One group does the new stuff and the other group codes from what group 1 does. AI will eat group 2. Problem is, group 2 is the big group.

  6. I live in a neighborhood of homes that routinely sell for >$4M. On my street, there are 2-General contractors, and on the street behind me … 2-plumbing contractors. When it comes to earning a living capable of putting you in one of the TOP suburban towns in the entire Bay Area … you might want to consider “the Trades”.

  7. I’ll just say this.
    Over the last 10 years, I have hired a range of trades dudes to upgrade my home, from plumbers, to electricians, to carpenters to cabinetry guys, on through to drywallers and flooring guys.
    All of them were solid guys with families and work ethics, having chatted with them all.
    All of them also had big trucks and big senses of humour, and most expressed being grateful for what they work hard to have,,,namely their homes and families and community here in the Okanagan
    I kid you not, Many of my neighbours are those guys. They even like me, the retired guy who strolls the hood and tries to be funny.

  8. “Learn to code” was always a stupid phrase anyway. A modicum of programming skills will buy you a poorly paid job in a white-collar ghetto with no future. To be a good, valuable, well-compensated programmer is no easy task. It takes a lot of training, a lot of experience, and large dollop of natural talent.

    1. “Learn to code” is just a code phrase that smug assholes use to say “we don’t give a shit that you’re losing your good-paying blue collar jobs”

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