In this episode of Secrets and Stories, we meet Bob Ippolito, a seasoned software developer with a knack for delving into the complicated yet ever-evolving realm of programming. Bob's journey has taken him from co-founding Mochi Media to steering a non-profit that centers on free computer science education. His experiences have made him an astute observer of the tech world's shifts and turns. The way Bob sees it, change is a constant companion in the tech industry, and adapting to it is often more pivotal than the change itself.
Our conversation with Bob touches on a question looming over many tech-minded folks entering the field today: Will the rise of AI make developers obsolete? Bob offers a refreshing perspective, highlighting a historical pattern—there’s always been something purported to replace programmers, yet it never quite does. Instead, what happens is developers evolve, working at higher levels of abstraction and solving new types of problems. It’s through this lens that Bob views AI and language models, not as threats, but as another step in this evolutionary path.
Bob also has advice for those worried about their place in this AI-focused future. He suggests that beginners shouldn't be too concerned with the fear of rapid change. Just like a well-built house requires a stable foundation, budding developers should focus on mastering core programming languages and concepts. These are the tools of the trade that will help navigate into any technological shifts. New tools come and go, but the fundamentals remain, and they provide the best grounding when the inevitable changes come.
Listening to this discussion on enki.com could help anyone interested in tech better understand how to prepare for the future. As Bob suggests, AI tools won’t replace the developer—they'll become just another item in the toolbox. But to make use of the new tools, you need to understand the old ones first. Staying ahead in tech is a balance of learning the new while mastering the old, and Bob’s insights could be the steady guide many need in these fast-moving times.
Kirill Makharinsky: Thinking about where things are going, Bob, what about folks in college who might be worried that, given how quickly AI is improving, will developers even exist? Is it even worth, learning to code? What would you tell them or what would be your thoughts or advice for them?
Bob Ippolito: If you've been around long enough, somebody is always saying that, you know, one reason or another, whether they're calling it 4GL or UML or no code or something, somebody is always promising a technology that gets rid of developers, but it's never happened. The only thing that ever really happens is that developers work at higher and higher abstraction levels, and we're able to, to just hopefully be more productive, but also solve different classes of problems. And
I think this is really no different. It's a very different, user interface right now, where you're working more with natural language than with a very rigid grammar. And I think that's interesting, but also, kind of hard to learn in its own way, especially with how things change so rapidly in the AI space. I think it's important that anyone, uh, starting or, you know, anyone that's in the industry should keep an eye on these technologies. Once they start to solidify really start diving in and learn how to use them, because one way or another, these will be tools in our developer toolbox. If you don't know the tools, you're going to have a hard time, solving problems or being employed if you were a diehard, Pascal programmer, in the nineties, and you never learned anything other than Pascal, you, probably wouldn't have a lot of options open to you other than maintaining legacy systems and, maybe doing some obscure stuff in Delphi it's really just a tool that is not very commonly used anymore. I think AI and LLMs are going to change some of the tools that we use.
Eventually, like obviously we're still with AI, still programming in Python and JavaScript and all that. It is just kind of a, a tool that we're leveraging to help us generate and understand that code. But at some point, the tools themselves will fundamentally change in one way or another, and it's important to stay on top of that. As a beginner, I would say it's probably best to mostly ignore it because it's changing so fast and, eventually it won't change so fast and you, you can't really build or learn on a foundation that's just changing under you all the time.
And right now we're using these LLMs to just work more efficiently with existing programming languages, and you can't do that if you have no idea what's going on. So you really should, your effort is better spent right now learning the underlying technologies that you'll be working with rather than learning the AI stuff.
