Do developers still need to learn programming languages in the age of AI?

If, as a software developer, you want to know what the most popular or best-paid programming languages are in the industry right now, there’s always a constant stream of surveys and reports to let you know. And career advice for developers will typically recommend that constant learning on the job is essential.

But if AI can produce code from a few plain-speaking prompts, has learning programming languages become redundant?

Certainly, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang believes that future generations won’t need to learn programming languages at all. “It is our job to create computing technology such that nobody has to program and the programming language is human. Everybody in the world is now a programmer,” he said at the World Government Summit in Dubai. “For the very first time, you can imagine everybody in your company being a technologist.”

Along with AI, this future Huang envisions is being helped along by the spread of low-code and no-code tools, which aren’t just being used by non-developers. Research by Forrester finds that 87% of enterprise developers are using low-code development platforms, driving substantial projected growth in this market.