Re:Ask HN: What are your advice for a CS/IT student for the ...
by bbor on Sunday November 08, 2026 @06:40AM
(#50412401)
Solidarity; not just professional, but human. In that sense, you're on an equal playing field with the most experienced of us :)
There's reason to have hope for the future, but I am very confident that we do not know what the world will be like in 5 years, much less our industry in particular.
There are people who insist that AI isn't a big deal, and that your career will look like theirs with some minor changes on the surface. I encourage you to listen to scientists instead, which are screaming from the rooftops that artificial minds change everything. Everything.
This is a pretty powerful essay, famous long before it ended up being spookily accurate, nailing the arrival of the singularity to within a ~year (30 years from 1993); it might help you understand why I say that there are no reliable predictions to be had: https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/book98/com.ch1/vinge.singularity...
Best of luck, and welcome to the field. I'd enjoy the Greek sun a bit more, but I also wouldn't quit school; no matter what the world ends up looking like, if learning to think critically about hard problems doesn't end up mattering, nothing will. And to say the least, computers aren't going to go away!
There's reason to have hope for the future, but I am very confident that we do not know what the world will be like in 5 years, much less our industry in particular. There are people who insist that AI isn't a big deal, and that your career will look like theirs with some minor changes on the surface. I encourage you to listen to scientists instead, which are screaming from the rooftops that artificial minds change everything. Everything.
This is a pretty powerful essay, famous long before it ended up being spookily accurate, nailing the arrival of the singularity to within a ~year (30 years from 1993); it might help you understand why I say that there are no reliable predictions to be had: https://frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/book98/com.ch1/vinge.singularity...
Best of luck, and welcome to the field. I'd enjoy the Greek sun a bit more, but I also wouldn't quit school; no matter what the world ends up looking like, if learning to think critically about hard problems doesn't end up mattering, nothing will. And to say the least, computers aren't going to go away!