As someone who built a satisfying and successful career around computer science and software, I’ve wanted nothing but for my kids to follow in my footsteps. And when they finally reach the age where they are choosing what to study in college, they’re being told to avoid it!

Part of the reason is obvious. Humans won’t be coding anymore because AI will write all the code, so why would someone choose to study Computer Science when it prepares you for jobs that won’t exist anymore?

I’m seeing the shift with my own eyes. I’ve been using AI for coding for over a year, and it’s allowed me to finish several end-to-end projects using frameworks I had no prior experience with. Projects that would have taken a professional team of engineers several months to build, I finished in weeks. And it keeps getting better and faster. Just a few weeks ago I switched to Claude Code, and I’m blown away by how much better it is than what I was using before. Every spare minute I have, I’m at my laptop telling it to write more code. If Claude can spin up real, working software in minutes, what does “learning to code” even mean anymore?

And it’s not just me. Every day I see more examples of people with zero coding experience building fully functional, professional, polished apps. At the same time, we hear stories about how dire the job market is for new CS grads.

So, the question for the day is: is computer science still worth it? Why should anyone choose to study it in this day and age?

I can’t answer “is computer science a good college major today.” I really don’t know. But I had an experience helping my son with his homework a few weeks ago that made me sure of one thing: there is still real value in learning computer science.

My son is taking AP Computer Science in high school. He’s learning object-oriented programming in Java. A lot of the coursework is what you’d expect: syntax. Variables. Loops. Arrays. Classes. All the rules you have to memorize just to make the code compile.

And he hates the moment when he hits the little triangle “run code” button, waits a few seconds, and his screen fills with a wall of error text that tells him he failed, but doesn’t tell him why.

A few weeks ago, he started getting really frustrated working on his homework. I gave my usual advice, reassuring him: “it’s okay to struggle, work it out, you’ll get it.”

He rolled his eyes because I can be a broken record, but he pushed back and told me, “I don’t mind hard work. I like to be challenged. I just don’t like this. This is different.”

He’s wicked smart. We’ve been playing chess recently and I can’t even come close to beating him. He sees the entire board and is always ten moves ahead of me. School has come easy to him. So, when he tells me this is different, it’s not because he can’t understand the concepts. It’s because it’s a different kind of hard.

Here’s what his homework assignment looked like: they were given a CSV file (Pokémon data—name, type, image URL). They had to load it, split strings into arrays, store the data in a class, and then write methods to query it. The assignment starts with tiny tasks and then, at the end, asks you to put everything together into a working program.

When he struggles, it’s almost always with that last “put it all together” step. The earlier parts of the assignment are small and self-contained: load a file, split a string, print values inside a loop. They’re approachable and not overwhelming. Sometimes they’ll even nudge you towards the right answer with embedded code comments and hints. It’s easy to get through those first tasks with a little trial and error without fully understanding what’s happening. But the final “put it all together” step builds on all of it. If you didn’t really grasp the earlier pieces, you can’t fake your way through the last question. You get stuck. The homework is no longer about knowing the right syntax to get your code to compile, but about knowing how to make a program work. And ultimately, this “put it all together” step is where real learning happens.

He comes to me for help with his CS homework because “mom is the tech person.” And he expects me to answer instantly, as if he asked me the square root of 64. But I can’t. I have to sit down, read, think, and troubleshoot.

After helping him a few times this year, I’ve realized the problem-solving steps are always the same, regardless of the assignment:

1. Understand the question. Don’t touch the keyboard until you’re clear on what you’re being asked to do.

2. Simplify. Start with a working program by simplifying it until it compiles successfully. Comment out everything you can. Get to a baseline.

3. Add back one change at a time. Write one line of code and then test to see if it still compiles successfully. Do this until you find your first error.

4. Instrument. Use print statements to see what the computer is actually doing.

5. Repeat until it works. Once you find the first error, fix it, then repeat step 3.

When his code finally compiles and he submits the homework, he feels satisfied. But what did he learn? Did he learn that “arrays are 0-indexed” and “you can’t store a decimal in an integer variable”? Well, yes, but the real learning is knowing how to approach a messy problem without panicking.

He is learning how to break down problems. How to reduce complexity. How to test assumptions. How to get comfortable not knowing something. And he’s learning that he can figure things out.

This is why computer science still has value. I have no doubt we no longer need to know code syntax because AIs will be writing all the code. But these problem-solving skills, what I like to call the “engineering mindset” is priceless.

As always, a list of some things I’ve been doing and finding interesting:

• Finished reading The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans. This book made me feel something, which is honestly all I look for with fiction. Definitely recommend it, if you like stories about the human experience and care more about character arcs than plot.

• Continuing to read Eastern Body, Western Mind; Chess for Dummies; and just started The Jews by Howard Fast. I used to read just one book at a time, but I’m experimenting with reading multiple at a time to see if it leads to more reading hours.

• Personal opsec: I use two-factor authentication for all email and finance apps and avoid SMS whenever possible, preferring authenticator apps instead. I finally added SIM protection to my phone, since SIM swapping is one of the few attacks that can nullify 2FA. If you haven’t done this, search “[your carrier] SIM protection” or just tell ChatGPT your carrier and device and ask how to enable it.

• A suicide prevention project that reaches people at difficult moments through anonymous letters written by volunteers: https://www.reasonstostay.co.uk.

• Someone I know through Farcaster fed Claude the Epstein files and turned it into a 64-episode podcast: www.epsteinfiles.fm. Three days after launching, it had ~12.5k plays and a 2.8k audience size. Interesting times we live in. It’s making me want to experiment with an AI-generated Farcaster podcast, not to replace GM Farcaster (I still think people want human hosts… or at least I need to believe that for now), but as a way to extend the brand and add to the content library.

I usually include a little photo section here, but apparently I haven’t taken many pictures since my last update. It’s either because it’s been too damn cold, or because I’ve been spending all my free time with Claude Code. Probably both. Here’s one lonely photo of the frozen Hudson River.

I started this substack in December 2022 as an experiment to see if developing a writing habit would help clarify my thinking and/or provide other benefits. It has evolved into different formats over the years, but it currently serves as my public journal.

I use it to share musings, meditations, and links to things I’m finding interesting as I build out a farcaster-native media company, a modern technology consulting company, raise my kids, and have fun creating and learning in the worlds of crypto, tech, finance, science and wellness.

Thank you for supporting my writing and journey. If you’d like to get in touch you can reply to me here or find me on X and farcaster.

Until next time, keep putting good into the world. —adrienne🌏❤️

As someone who built a satisfying and successful career around computer science and software, I’ve wanted nothing but for my kids to follow in my footsteps. And when they finally reach the age where they are choosing what to study in college, they’re being told to avoid it!

Part of the reason is obvious. Humans won’t be coding anymore because AI will write all the code, so why would someone choose to study Computer Science when it prepares you for jobs that won’t exist anymore?

I’m seeing the shift with my own eyes. I’ve been using AI for coding for over a year, and it’s allowed me to finish several end-to-end projects using frameworks I had no prior experience with. Projects that would have taken a professional team of engineers several months to build, I finished in weeks. And it keeps getting better and faster. Just a few weeks ago I switched to Claude Code, and I’m blown away by how much better it is than what I was using before. Every spare minute I have, I’m at my laptop telling it to write more code. If Claude can spin up real, working software in minutes, what does “learning to code” even mean anymore?

And it’s not just me. Every day I see more examples of people with zero coding experience building fully functional, professional, polished apps. At the same time, we hear stories about how dire the job market is for new CS grads.

So, the question for the day is: is computer science still worth it? Why should anyone choose to study it in this day and age?

I can’t answer “is computer science a good college major today.” I really don’t know. But I had an experience helping my son with his homework a few weeks ago that made me sure of one thing: there is still real value in learning computer science.

My son is taking AP Computer Science in high school. He’s learning object-oriented programming in Java. A lot of the coursework is what you’d expect: syntax. Variables. Loops. Arrays. Classes. All the rules you have to memorize just to make the code compile.

And he hates the moment when he hits the little triangle “run code” button, waits a few seconds, and his screen fills with a wall of error text that tells him he failed, but doesn’t tell him why.

A few weeks ago, he started getting really frustrated working on his homework. I gave my usual advice, reassuring him: “it’s okay to struggle, work it out, you’ll get it.”

He rolled his eyes because I can be a broken record, but he pushed back and told me, “I don’t mind hard work. I like to be challenged. I just don’t like this. This is different.”

He’s wicked smart. We’ve been playing chess recently and I can’t even come close to beating him. He sees the entire board and is always ten moves ahead of me. School has come easy to him. So, when he tells me this is different, it’s not because he can’t understand the concepts. It’s because it’s a different kind of hard.

Here’s what his homework assignment looked like: they were given a CSV file (Pokémon data—name, type, image URL). They had to load it, split strings into arrays, store the data in a class, and then write methods to query it. The assignment starts with tiny tasks and then, at the end, asks you to put everything together into a working program.

When he struggles, it’s almost always with that last “put it all together” step. The earlier parts of the assignment are small and self-contained: load a file, split a string, print values inside a loop. They’re approachable and not overwhelming. Sometimes they’ll even nudge you towards the right answer with embedded code comments and hints. It’s easy to get through those first tasks with a little trial and error without fully understanding what’s happening. But the final “put it all together” step builds on all of it. If you didn’t really grasp the earlier pieces, you can’t fake your way through the last question. You get stuck. The homework is no longer about knowing the right syntax to get your code to compile, but about knowing how to make a program work. And ultimately, this “put it all together” step is where real learning happens.

He comes to me for help with his CS homework because “mom is the tech person.” And he expects me to answer instantly, as if he asked me the square root of 64. But I can’t. I have to sit down, read, think, and troubleshoot.

After helping him a few times this year, I’ve realized the problem-solving steps are always the same, regardless of the assignment:

1. Understand the question. Don’t touch the keyboard until you’re clear on what you’re being asked to do.

2. Simplify. Start with a working program by simplifying it until it compiles successfully. Comment out everything you can. Get to a baseline.

3. Add back one change at a time. Write one line of code and then test to see if it still compiles successfully. Do this until you find your first error.

4. Instrument. Use print statements to see what the computer is actually doing.

5. Repeat until it works. Once you find the first error, fix it, then repeat step 3.

When his code finally compiles and he submits the homework, he feels satisfied. But what did he learn? Did he learn that “arrays are 0-indexed” and “you can’t store a decimal in an integer variable”? Well, yes, but the real learning is knowing how to approach a messy problem without panicking.

He is learning how to break down problems. How to reduce complexity. How to test assumptions. How to get comfortable not knowing something. And he’s learning that he can figure things out.

This is why computer science still has value. I have no doubt we no longer need to know code syntax because AIs will be writing all the code. But these problem-solving skills, what I like to call the “engineering mindset” is priceless.

As always, a list of some things I’ve been doing and finding interesting:

• Finished reading The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans. This book made me feel something, which is honestly all I look for with fiction. Definitely recommend it, if you like stories about the human experience and care more about character arcs than plot.

• Continuing to read Eastern Body, Western Mind; Chess for Dummies; and just started The Jews by Howard Fast. I used to read just one book at a time, but I’m experimenting with reading multiple at a time to see if it leads to more reading hours.

• Personal opsec: I use two-factor authentication for all email and finance apps and avoid SMS whenever possible, preferring authenticator apps instead. I finally added SIM protection to my phone, since SIM swapping is one of the few attacks that can nullify 2FA. If you haven’t done this, search “[your carrier] SIM protection” or just tell ChatGPT your carrier and device and ask how to enable it.

• A suicide prevention project that reaches people at difficult moments through anonymous letters written by volunteers: https://www.reasonstostay.co.uk.

• Someone I know through Farcaster fed Claude the Epstein files and turned it into a 64-episode podcast: www.epsteinfiles.fm. Three days after launching, it had ~12.5k plays and a 2.8k audience size. Interesting times we live in. It’s making me want to experiment with an AI-generated Farcaster podcast, not to replace GM Farcaster (I still think people want human hosts… or at least I need to believe that for now), but as a way to extend the brand and add to the content library.

I usually include a little photo section here, but apparently I haven’t taken many pictures since my last update. It’s either because it’s been too damn cold, or because I’ve been spending all my free time with Claude Code. Probably both. Here’s one lonely photo of the frozen Hudson River.

I started this substack in December 2022 as an experiment to see if developing a writing habit would help clarify my thinking and/or provide other benefits. It has evolved into different formats over the years, but it currently serves as my public journal.

I use it to share musings, meditations, and links to things I’m finding interesting as I build out a farcaster-native media company, a modern technology consulting company, raise my kids, and have fun creating and learning in the worlds of crypto, tech, finance, science and wellness.

Thank you for supporting my writing and journey. If you’d like to get in touch you can reply to me here or find me on X and farcaster.

Until next time, keep putting good into the world. —adrienne🌏❤️