The kids are alright (and they'll probably still learn regex)
TL;DR: You should still learn regex (and other things), but I really just wanted an excuse to vibe code
Just because AI coding is doing all the heavy lifting on the boring stuff, that doesn’t mean we should stop learning how all these pieces fit together. Having a deep understanding of the system, languages and frameworks you interact with daily might not be a requirement anymore, but there’s still value in having a mental model of how it all works in your head.
This isn’t even really all that new. We’ve been dealing with some form of this question for decades. Do you really need to know how your sorting algorithm works in order to use sort()? Or linked lists? Probably not, and yet we still teach it. Not necessarily because the industry is saying “give us coders that know how linked lists work”, and not because these are questions people like to ask in interviews. It’s largely about building the mental model that lets you reason about problems when the abstraction breaks down. And abstractions always break down eventually.
And now, just like B-Trees in your database, we don’t need to know anything about regex in order to create it, modify it, and use it with the help of an AI coding agent.
/machines ke(?:pt|ep) winning, and it’s fine/
Whether it’s weaving textiles or absolutely destroying us at chess, there’s a long list of cases where machines are either more efficient or just plain superior to human ability. And yet, we still spend meaningful amounts of time mastering skills that we no longer have an edge on.
Computers beat us at chess a couple of decades ago and now we’re at the point
where easy mode on the Delta entertainment system can beat all but the most advanced chess players
. And today, chess is more popular than it’s likely ever been, at least in terms of sheer number of players (thanks, Queen’s Gambit).
Most of us aren’t deluded. We know the machines won. But we understood that the value of the practice was never really about the output.
/^Craftsmanship.+/
The value of these skills to a software developer is the same as the value of teaching arithmetic to someone with access to a calculator. You still teach arithmetic because it builds intuition. Knowing when an answer looks wrong, estimating on the fly, understanding why the formula works in the first place. That comes from doing the math, not from watching a calculator do it.
It’s the same for developers. If you stop growing and understanding how these things work, you stop being a craftsman and start becoming an operator. Someone who prompts the machine but who has no idea how any of it works. Well-rounded developers need to keep stretching, keep learning the fundamentals, algorithms they’ll never implement by hand, protocols they’ll never build from scratch. That’s how you build taste, judgment, and mental models that compound in ways that are hard to measure.
None of this means you should stop using AI. AI agents are probably the best learning tool we’ve ever had. You can quiz them, ask them to generate examples, and they’ll meet you at your level and explain things better than anybody on Stack Overflow ever did (but just to be clear - “You can’t parse HTML with Regex!").
Serious chess players use computers to train. They simulate different opponents, build pattern recognition. The computers haven’t replaced them, they just changed what practice looks like.
/Keep Learning Reg(?:ular Expressions|ex)/
We’ve spent our careers asking “will I need this?”. Making decisions to go deep on a new technology, or mastering an old one. That framing made sense when learning had a direct ROI. It’s broken now. The agent can learn things faster than you can ever hope to.
The question isn’t “will I need to know regex?” - because the answer is no. The question is what kind of developer are you. One who’s always stretching and learning, or one who stopped the day the machines got good enough and became just an operator.
We didn’t stop playing chess when the machines beat us. Don’t stop learning regex. Or better yet, just don’t stop learning.