Ng: coding agents are collapsing the value of language-specific syntax

Even though I’m a much better Python than JavaScript developer, with AI assistance, I’ve been writing a lot of JavaScript code recently. AI-assisted coding, including vibe coding, is making specific programming languages less important, even though learning one is still helpful to make sure you understand the key concepts. This is helping many developers write code in languages we’re not familiar with, which lets us get code working in many more contexts! My background is in machine learning engineering and back-end development, but AI-assisted coding is making it easy for me to build front-end systems (the part of a website or app that users interact with) using JavaScript (JS) or TypeScript (TS), languages that I am weak in. Generative AI is making syntax less important, so we can all simultaneously be Python, JS, TS, C++, Java, and even Cobol developers. Perhaps one day, instead of being “Python developers" or “C++ developers,” many more of us will just be “developers”! But understanding the concepts behind different languages is still important. That’s why learning at least one language like Python still offers a great foundation for prompting LLMs to generate code in Python…