Why software development education has to become more personalized

Source: Dev.to

Foundational vs. Role‑Specific Knowledge

I am currently reading Robert C. Martin’s Clean Architecture, and it made me wonder: what knowledge in software development is truly foundational, and what knowledge applies only to specific roles?

The answer, I believe, is that the amount of knowledge relevant only to specific roles is immense. Of course there are foundational aspects—like minimizing coupling and maximizing cohesion—that everyone should know. Yet even at this foundational level there is little knowledge that is universally agreed upon. Much of the knowledge in our field remains heavily debated to this date. Some argue that not using TDD is irresponsible, while others claim TDD is impractical or leads to bad designs because you’re not thinking enough about design before starting implementation.

Challenges in Educating Future Developers

• a) Limited universally‑applicable knowledge – most concepts depend on the context in which you work.
• b) Abundant, still‑debated knowledge – many practices are contested and evolve over time.

Personalized Learning with AI

I think the answer is to personalize education more, and with AI we are now in a great position to actually do that. Today I “vibe‑coded” a small web app that communicated with my local LMStudio server, and I realized that vibe‑coding allows you to learn in a more targeted way than is common in traditional education.

For example, it generated an async function in JavaScript using the await keyword. I neither knew what an async function was (though I could guess, of course) nor what the await keyword exactly did. Seeing those keywords in an actual example let me look them up on the Mozilla Developer Network, and I quickly grasped the concepts behind them.

The Core Skill: Reading Code

That is how education should change. The key was simply being able to read code. The syntax of the most common programming languages is similar enough that if you can recognize keywords in one, you can spot them in others. My ability to read the function declaration, identify async as a keyword modifying the function, and spot await as a keyword, allowed me to look those two up.

Of course, some computer‑science fundamentals are also necessary, but the basic thing is to teach students to read code and then let them get out there, arm them with AI, and let them learn on their own. After a period of self‑directed learning, bring the student back together with peers and instructors to present their code and demonstrate what they have learned.

Proposed Educational Model

• Learn on their own in an age where personalized learning based on individual interests is easier than ever.
• Guided by qualified instructors who can provide context and feedback.
• Implemented in the right way, moving away from the frontal assault of “here is some really fancy mathematics you’ll never need in practice” toward training students to do what they will actually do.