I maintain that in the future, any person wishing to learn any skill (not just coding!) will need to willingly eschew the use of AI when learning until they have "built the muscles". The literature is clear that repeated, hands-on practice is really the only way to build skills.

I suspect the progression will be "No AI until intuition (whatever that is for that skill)" -> "Gradual use of AI to understand where it falls short" -> "AI native expert".

How to actually implement this at scale is still TBD ;-) Ironically, AI will be invaluable for this e.g. as a hyper-personalized tutor but it will also present an irresistible temptation to offload the hands-on practice. We already have studies indicating the former is helpful but the latter stifles mastery. At this point I can only see self-discipline as a mechanism to willingly avoid AI.

Unfortunately, our testing-oriented education system only serves to incentivize over-reliance on AI (Goodhart's Law etc.) None of our current institutions and processes are suited for what is already happening and will only accelerate from here on. Things will need to change radically.

For this reason, I once predicted apprenticeships will be a thing again, and already there are signs with Microsoft's preceptorship proposal: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3779312

This is highly encouraging because a tech giant is not only acknowledging the problem, but proposing a solution. Not a complete solution by far but at least a start.