University of Washington CS professor explains what's changing for young software engineers

• Before AI, getting all the tiny details of code right mattered a lot more.
• University of Washington computer science professor Dan Grossman said it's just one of the things that's changing.
• Ultimately, Grossman is bullish on the future of CS and the need for computer engineers.

University of Washington computer science professor Dan Grossman said it's time to evolve the push to "Learn to Code."

"I think that part of what we were teaching a few years ago, when we had people learn to code, was a lot of focus on getting all the tiny details right," Grossman, who is also vice director of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, told Business Insider. "Where did you put a semicolon versus a comma? What exactly is the word for something? Things like that."

Grossman said AI coding tools have changed the conversations.

"We're going to see and really already see AI take care of a lot of that for the non-professional software engineers and in many ways for the professional software engineers," he said.

That doesn't mean that CS degrees aren't valuable, a point that some in AI, including OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor, have emphasized.

"The idea to precisely specify what you want an algorithm to be, what you want code to do, to have this sort of creative but precise design for an app or something that just makes you more productive or creative in your life," Grossman said. "A lot of the same skills are going to be needed."

Grossman said the Allen School, named after the famed Microsoft cofounder who once snuck into the university's computer science lab as a high school student, is still tweaking how it teaches students in a world "where the pesky details of code" matter less.

At the same time, Grossman said the conversation around CS has clearly changed.

"There was a time a few years ago where computer science was the popular major," Grossman said.

AI-related fears dominate the headlines and overshadow the job market, though the extent of the cooldown is debated. According to a New York Fed analysis of 2024 graduates, as of February, computer science and computer engineering graduates have among the highest unemployment rates at 7.8% and 7.0%, respectively. At the same time, Business Insider recently reported that data from TrueUp, a tech hiring analytics firm, shows more than 67,000 software engineering job openings, the highest level in over three years.

Grossman said that the Allen School's tracking shows its graduates are getting jobs at roughly the same rate, though where they are ending up has started to shift.

"We are seeing a bit more of our students go to companies that are absolutely tech companies, but they're not necessarily tech-first or tech-only companies," he said. "There are companies that everyone just thinks of for building software, but there are other companies that rely on software, but you don't necessarily think of as a software company."

Ultimately, Grossman said there will be a need for many engineers because AI has only just begun to push the limits of computing.

"The world can only eat so much food and can only drive across so many bridges, right?" he said. "But we haven't come anywhere close to the limit of what we would like software and computers to do."

For as much as has changed and will change in CS, Grossman said, there are core concepts that will remain vital to learn.

"Look, we've been building better and better tools and languages and ways to build software for decades," he said. "I'm always reminding people that five years ago, the way we develop and shift software already looked nothing like 25 years ago when we put software on CDs with one version a year, put it in boxes, wrapped it in cellophane, put it on trucks and shipped it to stores where people went in, picked up the box and bought it."