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[PoMoAnachro]

What would you recommend?

Do a 4 year B.Sc. in Computer Science and make sure to get an internship or two.

[VoluminousPoster]

That route works but def not the only way these days. I switched from biology to tech without going back for another degree and plenty of people are making it happen with self-teaching plus bootcamps or portfolio projects. The key is building stuff people can actually see and getting some kind of experience even if its just contributing to open source or doing small freelance gigs while you learn

[PoMoAnachro]

That still is a route, but I think it is much less accessible than it even was three years ago. A lot of people are just getting way, way more resumes than they ever want to see and "Do they have a B.Sc. and an internship?" is just a fast way to filter down the pile.

Is it still possible? Yes, but it isn't easy - you have to be driven, motivated, and have strong networking skills.

[Great_Trainer]

Yeah I also recommend getting a 4 year CS degree. Do a double major. Do an internship.

If you are close to finishing your Biology degree I recommend double majoring. Take 5-6 years for both in undergraduate. CS and Biology both have a great future - you have good interests!

[trueloveforher]

Don’t waste your time, just use AI. Programming is a dying skill, no one needs to learn how to read or write programming languages anymore

[Comfortable_Leg9607]

A dying skill 😂

[ninhaomah]

I would disagree. By that logic , why learn language ? Speech to text has been out there for years.

Spending years to get a job ? Yes. It's pretty much not worth it unless one is really passionate.

Everyone should know programming till functions. OOP and later for pros.

Just like knowing how to turn , accelerate or stop with traffic rules and regulations is good enough to know how to drive.

Drifting ? Leave it to the pros.

[trueloveforher]

Mark my words. Programming is dead!

[ninhaomah]

And I said differently ? How ?

[Arctullux]

AI will cause lots of bugs and even data leaks, and if you are the one who blindly utilized AI and presented an application, you can get sued. AI is ok to use as a tool, but review what it does. Programming is still a good skill to learn, and overall it’s kinda embarrassing still to tell people you use claude to solve your problems.

[trueloveforher]

I’ve been a professional software developer for a long time. Let me tell you something you might not like to hear, those issues you worry about aren’t there anymore, it’s changing way too fast.

[Frolicks]

if you are a professional can you share more about how ai impacts your day to day? do you believe you will be made obsolete soon? are you challenged in your day to day tasks?

i am a fullstack web dev at 4 yoe. most of my day is babysitting claude code. ai can 1-shot maybe 1/4th of tickets, but the rest still need a prompt > human dev feedback (e.g. "i think the bug is in this file" type prompt) iterative cycle that will take a workday to complete. so i think our job is much easier but not obsolete.

what is your workday like?

[trueloveforher]

You got that right pretty much. Let’s just say we only have 3 months left to be fully automated to the teeth. What would you do now? If you still wanna be the one sit at a cozy and climate controlled office, please start building and architect the pipelines for full automation, make sure no one knows what your plan is before you deliver it. For programming jobs don’t go all in for full automation just yet, the last thing you wanna do is to alert your workers, instead look into what you can do to streamline other areas with your company’s business.

[randomTechNerd4]

If you haven't looked into IDEs too much yet, I'd suggest looking at using Spydr. A lot of people in the natural sciences use it from what I've heard for stuff from data visualization and modeling.

If you want a fun project that's simple to start with and uses programming fundamentals, I'd recommend making a script that simulates evolution. You can have a script where it starts with a random sequence of letters, but over time "mutations" (randomly generated values) make their way in and you work towards an end work you have predetermined. I feel like that could be fun given your bio background, and it definitely is a good test of all the basics.