As a hardware engineer, most of the code that I write is either in assembly or low-level C (apart from the shell scripts to run simulation jobs or Perl/Python to parse log files). I am therefore very familiar with the volatile type qualifier in the C language. Referring to my well-worn copy of the Kernighan and Ritchie “The C Programming Language” book, the section on volatile states: The purpose of volatile is to force an implementation to suppress optimization that could otherwise occur.

Recently, I had a big debate with a few friends about teaching programming to kids. I was talking to them about a Python coding exercise that I was working on with my son. Several of these friends insisted that there is no point in learning programming anymore, since AI is going to write the code. Now, these are all very smart people, some of whom are in the tech industry, and whose opinions I value a lot.