Bad Advice

🫣 Unpopular opinion: Telling people they no longer need to learn to code is bad advice.

We've all heard it by now:

> Natural language prompts are the new way of coding!

> Vibe coding on Cursor is the future!

> No need for software engineers! They gone!

However, I just can't believe this is sound advice. In fact, I'll go as bold as calling it straight up *bad* advice.

On the flip side, I actually think this is the BEST time for people to sit down and actually learn how to code.

Why?

Speaking from personal experience, when I was working on Meetrics, one of my biggest pain points as a co-founder was not knowing how to code. It caused the full burden of development to fall on our CTO and slowed down iterative testing by extending the time to launch new features.

But more generally, I also realized how valuable of a skill it is to know how to code. And speaking to people that know how to code, they are 10X better at using AI to vibe code and build stuff.

So I decided to change that..

After a ton of research (on Reddit and well, by asking AI), I landed on The Odin Project (shout out TOP!). It's a free curriculum that teaches the fundamentals of web development (HTML, CSS, JS, & even Ruby on Rails). You can get pretty advanced in it if you'd like to.

It's insanely well-structured with progress tracking, clean UX/UI, Discord community help, and thoughtful explanations and practical assignments.

The best part: I'm progressing through the course pretty quickly WITH the help of AI. I primarily use AI to coach me through areas where I get stuck or need extra help and it's amazing how effective (and fast!) it is.

The best part?

When I try 'vibe coding' now, I'm already so much better.. even with the skills I've already picked up through TOP.

Why it matters?

Imagine you and a friend are both building a house: Same blueprint. Same contractor. Same budget. Same location. Same contractor check-ins.

Only difference?

You know nothing about construction, whereas your friend is pretty handy with woodworking and tools and has a good foundation on civil construction code.

Who do you think ends up with the better house?

Exactly.

Same thing with AI-powered coding (or vibe coding 👾). The more you understand coding foundation and frameworks, the better and faster the output.

Final thoughts: Don't skip the fundamentals. Pair _real_ coding skills with AI, and you're miles (kms? 🍁) ahead. It's a bit more work, but IMO well worth it.