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Replit’s CEO advises against studying computer science only for the money.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
Masad said there is still room for people deeply passionate about computer science.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
Some tech leaders agree on the enduring value of a CS education despite AI’s impact on coding.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Don’t pursue computer science just for the money, says Replit’s CEO.<\/p>\n
On an episode of the “20VC” podcast released on Saturday, Amjad Masad said that young people who are not deeply interested in CS should not study it.<\/p>\n
“If you don’t feel like you’re drawn to it like a fly drawn to a light, then don’t go into it because someone told you you’re going to make a boatload of money working for Google,” he said. “It’s pretty dumb to tell people to go into computer science if they’re not really intrinsically interested in it.”<\/p>\n
Masad cofounded Replit, an integrated coding environment, in 2016. The company has since pivoted into an AI-agent-led application builder and now competes with Microsoft’s GitHub, Cursor, and vibe-coding tools like Lovable and Emergent. It’s backed by investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, and Y Combinator.<\/p>\n
On the podcast, Masad added that in the early 2000s, people went into the field because they were passionate about understanding computers and programming. But after that, it became a “hyped up” subject, and college CS departments “exploded” because it became the easiest industry to make money in, he said. With AI, that is no longer the case.<\/p>\n
“Now, if you’re interested in it, there’s still ways to contribute. You could get into ML and AI and go work at the big labs or a company like ours,” he said, referring to machine learning.<\/p>\n
He said that even as AI models progress, fundamentals like data structures and algorithms won’t change, and tech will always need people who understand the “underpinnings” of CS.<\/p>\n
Masad joins a group of tech leaders who say a CS education is still valuable.<\/p>\n
On a podcast appearance earlier this month, venture capitalist and Affirm CEO Max Levchin said that writing good code is an art, and AI can’t take that away.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think the LLMs are going to naturally always deliver beautifully crafted, elegant, and yet scientifically correct code,” Levchin said.<\/p>\n
He added, “As a programmer, without having a solid foundation in computer science, I wouldn’t be able to have that.”<\/p>\n
In an interview with Business Insider published in December, AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton said that AI is replacing some coding tasks, but that doesn’t mean a CS degree isn’t valuable.<\/p>\n
“Many people think a CS degree is just programming or something,” Hinton said.<\/p>\n
“There’s a lot more to coding than writing the code,” he added. “Computer science is a wonderful major to learn systems thinking.”<\/p>\n
Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n<\/div>\n