My 15-year-old loves coding—is it still worth pursuing in the age of AI?

The best reason to encourage her is that she is curious and happy when she does it. At 15, she doesn’t need to commit to a career; she can experiment, build small projects, and see where the interest leads. Supporting that enthusiasm is probably more important than predicting the job market.

AI has changed how software is made, but it hasn’t removed the need for people who can think clearly about what should be built or tell whether generated code is safe and correct. In some ways, knowing how to code makes AI more useful because she can direct it, test it, and improve what it produces. If she has a real interest, she can explore different areas over time and find one that suits her.

If she enjoys coding, let her code. AI can generate programs, but people still need to understand the problem, choose the right approach, check the output, debug it, and connect it to real systems. Those skills are valuable, and experienced developers are nowhere near obsolete. More importantly, finding something she loves and is motivated to learn is valuable even if it never becomes her career.

Coding is a lot like playing an instrument, painting, or woodworking: most people who do those things never become professionals, but that doesn’t make them wasted time. If programming is fun and fulfilling for her, it’s a perfectly worthwhile hobby. She doesn’t need to justify every interest by turning it into a job.

Learning programming develops logic, persistence, creativity, and problem-solving. Those abilities transfer to almost any field, even if she eventually chooses a career unrelated to software. Calculators didn’t make learning math pointless, and AI doesn’t make understanding technology pointless either.