My 14-year-old nephew is well on his way to building JARVIS - at least he is in his head!
And all it took to catalyze his love of coding was gifting him a Raspberry Pi for his birthday (I’d like to tell you I’m that uncle, but it wasn’t my gift to him!).
As he tells me about what he’s going to build, I’m thinking: Kid, you’re about to learn that reality is way messier than Marvel movies.
Fast forward a few weeks. I ask him how it’s going.
“Well, I built something that can tell me the weather!”
I catch myself before making the obvious joke about how his phone already does that. Instead, I’m genuinely amazed. From zero to weather API calls? That’s real progress.
The dilemma
But then comes my dilemma.
Do I mention AI coding tools? GitHub Copilot could probably get him to his JARVIS dream 10x faster.
But would he actually learn anything?
There’s something powerful about struggling through the basics - understanding why your code breaks, debugging line by line, building intuition about how systems actually work.
The tools are incredible. But the struggle might be the point.
Shortcuts vs. skill-building
I think about the future of learning, my kids’ digital generation, and the amazing technology that will augment their capabilities to create. But I’m left wondering: when do these powerful shortcuts end up shortcutting the necessary learning and skill development? And when is that trade-off worth it?
I don’t have a clean answer for my nephew yet. But the question itself feels like the one every parent, teacher, and team lead is going to be wrestling with for the next decade. Let me know how you’re thinking about it.
