10 Years to Learn Programming — Is Google’s Director of Research Still Right?
With AI systems, it takes less time to learn how to program
Peter Norvig (former director of research and search quality at Google) wrote a famous article, in which he claimed that it takes 10 years to learn how to program. If you have not read the article: “Teach Yourself Programming in 10 Years” by Peter Norvig, I encourage you to do so. Here is the link to the article: http://norvig.com/21-days.html.
Peter Norvig’s argument was that it takes time, patience, and commitment to become an expert in programming.
Peter Norvig’s article was written some 20 years ago. In today’s world dominated by AI, do we still need 10 years to learn how to program?
In fact, with AI systems, it takes less time to learn how to program. I like this famous quote from Jensen Huang:
“It is our job to create computing technology such that nobody has to program. And that the programming language is human, everybody in the world is now a programmer. This is the miracle of artificial intelligence,” Jensen Huang, CEO NVIDIA
While AI systems will not completely replace human programmers, the time needed to learn how to program is much reduced.
Having basic knowledge about programming is all what you need. With basic programming background, you can use AI to hone in your programming skills.
For beginners trying to get into programming, the focus should be on mastering the skill of computational thinking. You need to understand the workflow of how computer programs work.
Mastering the skill of computational thinking will help you to harness AI resources for writing efficient codes.