Should High School Students Still Learn to Code? 'Absolutely,' Says OpenAI Engineer

Aug 21, 2025 04:05 AM - 6 months ago 237115

An OpenAI unit personnel is clearing up the "misinformation" online and telling precocious schoolhouse students that they should "absolutely study to code."

On an section of the OpenAI podcast past week, OpenAI interrogator Szymon Sidor noted that precocious schoolhouse students still summation benefits from learning programming, moreover though AI coding devices for illustration ChatGPT and Cursor automate the process.

Learning to codification helps students create problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, Sidor said. He noted that moreover if programming becomes obsolete successful the future, it is still a viable measurement to cultivate the accomplishment of breaking down problems and solving them.

Related: Perplexity CEO Says AI Coding Tools Cut Work Time From 'Four Days to Literally One Hour'

"One accomplishment that is astatine premium, and will proceed being astatine premium, is to person a really system intellect that tin break analyzable problems into pieces," Sidor said connected the podcast. "That mightiness not beryllium programming successful the future, but programming is simply a good measurement to get that skill. So are different kinds of domains wherever you request to deliberation a lot."

Podcast big Andrew Mayne, who was antecedently OpenAI's main subject communicator, agreed pinch Sidor. Mayne stated that he learned to codification "later successful life" and recovered it to beryllium a useful instauration successful interacting pinch AI to technologist precise prompts.

"Whenever I perceive group say, 'Don't study to code,' it's like, do I want an airplane aviator who doesn't understand aerodynamics?" Mayne said connected the podcast. "This doesn't make overmuch consciousness to me."

Though Mayne and Sidor whitethorn judge that learning to codification is foundational and urge it to precocious schoolhouse students, different AI leader presents a contrasting viewpoint. Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, the most valuable company successful the world, said successful June that AI equalizes the technological playing section and allows anyone to constitute codification simply by prompting an AI bot successful earthy language.

Instead of learning Python aliases C++, users tin conscionable inquire AI to constitute a program, Huang explained.

Related: AI Will Create More Millionaires successful the Next 5 Years Than the Internet Did successful 2 Decades, According to Nvidia's CEO

Big Tech companies are progressively turning to AI to make caller code, alternatively of having quality engineers manually constitute it.

In April, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that unit members were tapping into AI to constitute "well complete 30%" of caller codification astatine Google, higher than 25% recorded successful October. In the aforesaid month, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that engineers are utilizing AI to constitute up to 30% of code for institution projects.

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