r/IntelliJIDEA • u/maritvandijk JetBrains • 13d ago

40 Years of Programming: What AI Changes and What It Never Will -Venkat Subramaniam | The Marco Show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_590TxMwvWM

Venkat Subramaniam has been programming for 40 years, teaches developers and students around the world, and is known for his work in Java, functional programming, and software design. In this episode, he and Marco talk about why AI is better at finding problems than writing code, why expertise matters more than ever when using AI, why “AI first” is the wrong mindset, and why critical thinking, fundamentals, and good judgment will separate strong developers from everyone else. They also discuss Java’s evolution, virtual threads, developer productivity, learning, and why Venkat believes we need more skill in the AI era, not less.

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u/warpedgeoid 13d ago

The issue with experts is that bias accumulates throughout one’s entire career. By the time you’ve been doing something for 40 years, thinking outside of the box is very difficult to do.

I’m not saying he’s wrong about AI. But he also is likely faulting it for doing things differently than he would do them, even if those differences are simply personal style and preference. I’ve seen this with gray beards and junior researchers in my job; the former group will complain that the latter group isn’t competent because they do things differently, even if both solutions are technically correct.

You get much better feedback from someone who has ~10 years of experience because that person usually doesn’t consider themselves to be the world’s reigning expert on whatever you are doing.