Sam Altman recently said something that caught my attention: “Don’t learn to code.” Instead, he says, learn high agency, soft skills, and idea generation.

I think he’s half right—and half dangerously wrong. Yes, high agency, soft skills, and idea generation matter. They mattered before the LLM era, and they still matter now. No argument there. But telling people to stop learning to code? That is the most dangerous advice in tech right now.

The Abstraction Layer Pattern

Let’s agree on a fact first: LLM is a new abstraction layer on top of coding. You describe what you want in English, and AI writes the code. You get what you want—roughly. Sounds like coding is dead, right? Not so fast.

Every time a new abstraction layer has appeared, the people who won—the people who were the best—were the ones who understood the layer just below it.

  • Assembly → C: The best C programmers understood memory.
  • C → Python: The best developers understood what the interpreter was doing behind the scenes.
  • Infrastructure → Cloud: When AWS and GCP abstracted away infrastructure, the best architects were the ones who understood networking and the underlying architecture.

This has been true at every level. And it will continue to be true. Today, the abstraction layer is English. You prompt, AI writes code. But if you understand the code underneath—if you understand what’s going on behind the scenes—you:

  • Prompt better
  • Review better
  • Catch mistakes faster
  • Architect systems the way you actually want them
  • Fill the gaps in AI-generated code and recommendations

That’s not a theory. That’s a fact.

The Passenger Problem

If you choose not to learn code, that’s your choice. But you have to accept what comes with it: you are becoming a passenger in a car, driving through a city you don’t even know.

If you want to be a professional in this industry, you need to understand what’s going on behind the scenes. You need to take responsibility.

Because as a professional, you are responsible for that code. You won’t be able to say, “There’s this huge bug and I wasn’t responsible.” When there’s an emergency, when there’s an urgent situation—you are the person who will handle it.

Don’t Stop Learning

Don’t stop learning to code just because AI writes it for you.

Learning to code will be your edge in this new era. Understanding what’s going on behind the scenes will be a unique skill—and it will be your competitive advantage if you want to become a true professional in this industry.

Watch the Video

I also shared this perspective in video format. You can watch it here: