this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
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I'd be happy to hear your reasons why.
Short version is that 10-15 years ago, when I was a student, it had the same “vibe” as vibe coding has today, i.e. the promise of easy implementation, but with the final product being sloppy, unreadable and buggy.
What do you suggest to learn instead? I'm teaching myself python because I wanted to understand coding more. Also because a lot of the tinkering with micro controllers can be done with micro python. So I have things I want to do with it too, future projects I want to create.
Funnily enough like the article mentions I taught myself HTML first in the early 00s. I did enjoy it but never used it much outside of the odd geocities website. This article does make me think maybe I need to revisit that too.
I also considered other languages to start on like maybe some kind of C or Basic but ultimately python felt like it was the most popular suggestion for newbs. I can always learn other things later.
I don't think you'll be broken by learning Python, but in my opinion to be a good programmer you need to understand at least one layer of abstraction lower than what you're implementing. So, as an example, once you learn how to code in Python using idk
numpy, you absolutely must learn hownumpyworks under the hood. And that means C, because you cannot escape C.I teach people Rust and I always say that you kind need to know the nightmare that is C/C++ to be able to fully appreciate what Rust does for you and how it builds a much more sensible programming model on top of the same set of basic concepts we use and have always used to talk to silicone. And then you can write web apps with Rust and never even touch a raw pointer in your life, but it will make you an infinitely better Rust developer if you understand what's going on below you.
This works surprisingly well across the entire SE stack IMO, e.g. if you're using React you should be fully aware of the layer below you - raw JS and HTML. If you're coding in C you should be aware of assembly and memory models. If you're using SQL to query a database you should be aware of logical plans. If you're a project manager you should be aware of what software engineering entails and what people in your team actually do day-to-day.