Gen Z abandoning traditional computing skills - will they be helpless when AI fails?

LOL "kids today don't know how to hunt mammoth with stone spears" energy. Every generation builds on abstractions previous ones created. Grandparents programmed with punch cards, you used visual studio, kid uses AI. Evolution not regression

Teaching CS at community college since 2011. Students increasingly arrive unable to solve problems independently. Give them error message without internet access - pure panic ensues. Their mental models completely lack understanding of what happens "under the hood." Genuinely concerning

Literally couldn't care less about "traditional skills." History's filled with obsolete knowledge people insisted was essential. Quick quiz: can YOU make a fire without matches? Butcher an animal? Navigate by stars? AI handles tedious coding so we can focus on actual innovation

These same arguments happened when calculators replaced slide rules. "Students won't understand REAL math!" Meanwhile math education improved because focus shifted to concepts over computation

Watched entire QA department implode last month when connection to openai went down for 6hrs. $30M project deadline missed because NOBODY could write test scripts without AI assistance. CTO losing mind. Meanwhile ancient backend dev quietly fixed critical prod issues without internet

AI models trained on human-written code can only regurgitate past patterns. Someone still needs to create novel solutions to push technology forward. Just won't be the prompt-engineers who think "coding" means chatting with robots

The fundamental problem isn't tools but disappearing computational thinking skills. Using AI without understanding logic, flow control, or data structures is like driving without knowing traffic rules - temporarily works until inevitable catastrophic failure

my college library removed most programming books last semester to make room for "collaborative AI spaces" because "nobody reads documentation anymore." three weeks later students couldn't complete assignments during cloud outage. librarian looked genuinely shocked

What I find fascinating as a recruiter: can immediately tell which candidates learned fundamentals vs which rely entirely on AI. The "AI-dependent" interview responses sound impressive initially but collapse under basic follow-up questions. Huge market advantage for those with actual skills

yall dramatic af. been coding 15+ years and ChatGPT helps me 10x productivity without "losing skills." competent devs use tools intelligently, incompetent ones were always around. AI just makes mediocrity more efficient 💀