22. The Steam Engine of Software: Kris Younger on Transforming Education in the Age of AI
Season 2, Episode 11 of Kinwise Conversations · Hit play or read the transcript
Key Takeaways for Mission-Driven Leaders
AI is forcing an immediate overhaul of how we teach technology and prepare the workforce. Here are the most critical shifts discussed in this episode:
Coding is Out, Management is In: The primary skill for a future developer is no longer writing code, but computational thinking, strategic problem definition, and the ability to manage fleets of AI agents to deliver complete projects.
Weaponize AI in Response: Educators must pivot to project-based learning and design assessments that require students to use human-specific skills (e.g., ethical judgment, communication) to critique or improve AI output.
Don't Cut Off the On-Ramp: Businesses freezing entry-level hiring are making a strategic mistake, starving their organizations of the nimble, unburdened talent needed to rapidly adopt AI-native workflows.
The End of Code: Why AI Makes Traditional Programming Obsolete
Kris Younger: Thank you, Lydia. It's really good to be here with you. I am basically a technologist... For a long part of it, I was sort of an East Coast guy for a West Coast Technology company... I was representing, you know, technical companies that were building network software and network hardware kinds of products. And it's always been interesting to me because as a tech evangelist, you spend a lot of time doing education, right? Talking people through solutions to their problems and so forth and so on... Now, in 2017, I was looking around for something interesting to do, and in all places, Wilmington, Delaware. I was living near there and there was a non-profit coding bootcamp that was starting up... Your average Zip Code student also makes about, hmm, between $30,000 and $35,000 a year kind of thing coming into Zip Code. And they go out 12 weeks later with placements, usually jobs and so forth, in places like JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock, where they're making in the mid-'80s. So it's a tremendous investment in themselves. And I find it fascinating because of the personal transformation that people go through as they go through this bootcamp in just 12 short weeks.
Lydia Kumar: Yeah, 12 weeks isn't much time at all. If you really think, in 12 weeks, your salary is doubling, you're building a whole set of skills. I'm imagining it's a pretty intense environment for 12 weeks for you to be able to learn, it is, that much in that short a period of time.
Kris Younger: Yes, it is. I mean, I routinely joke with them about how I'm going to ruin their lives because there's no evenings or weekends off at Zip Code... It's more of a personal transformation in many cases. I mean, it's not just education in the technology of programming languages, right? It's also got a very important professional development. We do things like mock interviews and personal presentation skills and all sorts of the sort of soft skills around being a software developer. And enterprises really like this because most bootcamps are really just focused on teaching you how to do Java or teaching you how to do Python. We are not only intense on that side of things, but we're also intense on some of these professional development things, which a lot of these folks have never had before.
Lydia Kumar: I think that's so important... I saw a post on LinkedIn about how the most unemployed degree from people in their twenties is computer science now... How are you responding, or how are you thinking about what it means to be in coding or in computer science now that we're in kind of a different reality than we were in 2017?
Kris Younger: The very first, we run our course as a cohort... we talk a lot about cohorting... you have to learn not only how to code, but you need to learn how to work together and stay out of each other's way... I am desperately trying to stop saying coding in my descriptions of this and go back to saying programming because coding is no longer what we do... when we talk about programming or development of software, everything has changed, and the first words I use in every course now is Artificial Intelligence has changed everything in the programming business. Everything.
The Sailing Ship to Steam Engine Effect: An Irreversible Shift
Kris Younger: The computer science that I grew up with a very long time ago... is no longer what's needed in the space. We don't need people who can understand the intricacies of sorting routines or search things or all of the kind of algorithmic stuff... That's not longer gonna matter because the agents, the LLMs, are able to do all of that... The higher-level skills that truly expert programmers have always had are becoming more and more important and coming to the fore... [It] might very well be, you know, when they went from the age of sail to steam, you know, to steam engines in boats, right, in ships. Where suddenly all of this skill and material and all of the knowledge... is just not important anymore... This, I think is closer to what's actually happening with programming.
From Algorithms to Directors: The New Core Competencies for the AI Workforce
Kris Younger: What has been happening is, is the higher-level skills that truly expert programmers have always had are becoming more and more important... Jeanette Wing... wrote an article about computational thinking. And it turns out computational thinking is very, very, very, very important to learning how to work with computers in this AI LLM agent kind of age... Critical thinking skills turn out to be far more important. Clarity in your written communications or spoken communications is far more important than it ever has been... The notion that one is able to describe the data flows or, what the program does, not necessarily how it does it, those are the things that are becoming crucially important... The technologist then is going to have to be less a programming whiz with a language and more of a business analyst, right? More of somebody who can translate the way people talk about their business systems into technology.
Why the Future Programmer is a "Director"
Kris Younger: What we need is, is a programmer needs management skills. A computer programmer is going to become more like a director is in a modern business... [They] not only have to be responsible for getting it done. They also have to figure out what needs to be done, right? And they have to figure out how to marshal their resources... That's closer to what a programmer is evolving into right now because it's only a matter of time before these agents... that we have entire armies of those at our disposal as an individual. And then it's my responsibility to make sure they work together and make it happen... I think we are going to see a lot more of management skills across the spectrum of education.
Lydia Kumar: And so I'm wondering... what is the smallest amount that people need to understand about how LLMs work, about how programming works?
Kris Younger: And I know there's gonna be people out there who say, no, no, no, no, no, it's always been that way. You have to know the very bits and bytes of everything to really know this stuff. And the answer is no, because that's not the way it is with my car, with my microwave... I don't need to know the details of bits and bytes of all that to use it to great effect.
Beyond the Blue Book: Redesigning Assessment for Delivery, Not Rote
Lydia Kumar: How did you begin even redesigning or thinking about what an assignment looked like in 2017 to what it looks like in 2025?
Kris Younger: We're still in the process of making this transition... I have the flexibility to change whatever I want to do with my students very quickly... The final exam is, okay, here's all your tools. Build me the following thing in 90 minutes or three hours. And it has to be able to do these things... It's more like project-based stuff where you're given the vague specifications or details of what needs to be created. And then you have to do it all with a group of people... Our capstone project is, you've got a week to say, build a Slack clone... That is an extraordinarily valuable learning environment, right? Because people come away from it going, I had no idea that it wasn't just slinging code. It's also communicating what I've done.
Kris Younger: One of the things that I think a lot of teachers are complaining about right now is that students are weaponizing generative AI against them. And my answer to those teachers is, is, well, weaponize it in response, right? Make it hard on the little buggers to create what you want from them... The dust is far from settled here is my point... The difference between Claude Sonnet 4.0 and 4.5 is dramatic! This is something that's happened in the last 72 hours, Lydia.
The Strategic Threat: Why Freezing Entry-Level Hiring is a Mistake
Lydia Kumar: What is the hope, or the fear, or the curiosity about AI that's keeping you up at night right now?
Kris Younger: It's the fact that many businesses are... as confused and uncertain about what the future of entry-level positions look like as we are, because entry-level positions have largely dried up... I'm very worried about businesses who currently think that, oh, we just need to stop. We don't need the level of entry-level people that we used to get... And so let's not hire any of them until we figure out what it is we need. That's hard because that means there's a whole lot of people who are out there kinda languishing... I don't think that's gonna be true. I don't think that's gonna be true. So yes, I'm very worried about businesses and the way they're looking at entry level...
Kris Younger: The smart brains are not going into computer science anymore. They're going into engineering, they're going into business... They don't have any bad, they don't have any knowledge they have to unlearn. They don't have any old ways they've always done things that they're going to apply. Right. They're gonna be people who look at it with an open mind... Those people are still out there... We've got to make sure that we're still fueling those folks, right? So we have to come up with new and interesting ways to keep that curiosity alive.
Connect and Resources
Connect with Kris on LinkedIn to follow his work at the intersection of AI, education, and software development.
Zip Code Wilmington: Learn more about the nonprofit's mission to transform lives through their 12-week intensive coding bootcamps.
Prompts Inspired by Kris
Use these high-level prompts to apply the principles of management and critical thinking to AI:
The "Sailing Ship to Steam Engine" Business Pivot: Ask an AI to analyze your three most time-consuming administrative tasks and design an AI-native solution to reduce time by 75%. The AI must also describe the new human roles needed to manage this system.
The "Build a Clone" Project-Based Challenge: Ask a code-generating AI to create the basic code architecture (folder structure, database schema) for a clone of a site like Yelp. Then, detail in plain language how you, as the Project Manager, would use human developers and other AI agents to complete the product.
Managing the Agent Army Scenario: Outline a complex software bug. Write the precise communication prompts you would give five specialized AI agents (Front-end UI, Back-end Logic, Testing, etc.) to coordinate the investigation, identify the root cause, and propose the final fix.
Weaponize AI for Critical Thinking Assessment: Use an AI to create a short, persuasive essay (500 words) on a controversial topic. Now, ask the AI to generate a higher-level critical thinking assignment that requires a student to use human skills (ethical judgment, emotional intelligence) to critique or improve the original AI output.
The "Unlearning the Old Way" Transition Plan: Identify a process in your professional life where you use outdated, manual methods. Ask the AI to act as your Process Re-designer Agent and design a new, AI-augmented process that forces you to abandon the old steps and focus entirely on high-level decision-making.
About Kris Younger
Kris Younger is the Director of Education at Zip Code Wilmington, a nonprofit software programming immersive training program in Wilmington, Delaware. A veteran technologist, Kris now focuses on preparing students for enterprise-level careers in software development and data engineering. He has been deeply engaged in redesigning technical education to embrace generative AI, emphasizing critical thinking, communication, and project delivery to ensure graduates are immediately competitive in the rapidly evolving job market.
