Katlego Sekhu

TIOBE published its latest Programming Community Index, which ranks the most popular programming languages based on data from the Internet.
The editor of My Broad Band, Jan Vermeulen, joined 959 Breakfast to expound on what this means in the age of AI. Vermeulen notes that while AI is good, you still need a human being to prompt it. “AI can’t write the stuff automatically; you still have to tell it in good English. You need to know how and what to describe in order to get what you want out of it.
“You still need some understanding of programming languages and the underlying technology that you are working with. For example, if you are working with web technology, you need to do things in a way that the AI will be able to interpret and generate the code for you.”
He adds that one would still need knowledge of how to debug the code. “It is almost guaranteed that the code generated isn’t going to be perfect and would need some tweaking.”
Additionally, he pointed out that AI is a tool to help reduce the grunt work of programming. “There are a lot of things we can now do faster, but the actual behind-the-scenes stuff still needs development,” said Vermeulen.
Vermeulen touched on how easy it has become to learn these languages for those who want to get into software or application development careers.
Listen to the full discussion on the podcast:
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