Do 10 pushups or squats.

I've been meaning to read the AIMA book too. There is a free video lecture course by Norvig himself on Udacity do check them out.

That is incredibly wonderful to hear. Glad they were able to make it through hell.

Could you elaborate more? What would those said foundations and fundamentals be ?

In a nutshell, a lot more understanding of how computers work, and how that affects software design.

From theory like Order(n), 3rd Normal Form, P versus NP, Recursion, Logic (including bit logic) etc, to practical things like exploration of language (why languages are different, why that doesn't matter), how Operating Systems actually work (and what they do), how Networks work (their strengths and weaknesses and thus impact on software design) and so on.

Obviously I can't list a 4 year syllabus[1] here, and it would be different for each college. IME colleges don't teach programming past the first couple weeks, although it is the basis for assignments and evaluation for the next 4 years. (In the way that grade school doesn't teach writing after year 1, but you write a lot in the next 10 years.)

[1] All of this can be self taught. There's plenty of text books and materials online. But basically self-taught people learn programming, not theory, and lack the "path" of a formal syllabus.

Each school will of course have a different syllabus, and some will offer selective modules as well focusing on specific areas like graphics, compilers, databases etc.

Thank you for taking the time. This is quite standard CS degree syllabus, while quality and rigour of CS schools differ but I think any decent CS grad should know these.

Although I do understand the analogy being made here. But I suspect OP much like myself is hoping for concrete suggestions. To my mind argument is Software Jobs will shrink and only the very elites will be valuable aka the recent Meta's 10s of millions of offers. But for the rest of average Joes it will be harsh job market or even non existent. So what can the average programmer do , concretely.

A concrete proposal? Become an Auditor, not an Author.

As AI generates billions of lines of code, the world is about to be flooded with "technical debt" and "security holes." The scarcity shifts from writing code to verifying it.

Concrete Action: Shift your skill set towards security auditing, compliance, and system architecture verification. Position yourself as the "Digital Notary" who stamps the AI's work with a human guarantee.

When a bank (like mine) lends money to a software project, we don't ask "Did an AI write this?" We ask "Which human is going to jail if this fails?"

Be the person whose name is on the insurance policy. That is a job an algorithm can never take.

Are there many jobs where failure results in jail time? Pretty dystopian.

I for one am afraid and this keeps me awake at night, the general take on HNers always seems to be oh you are only doing mundane tasks, AI can't do what I do. Which is partly true, but claude code has improved leaps and bounds almost exponentially at least from my subjective usage. My solution is to just save and invest aggressively and grind DSA to get a higher paying job as I don't see myself in the elites that these discussions are full of. I really am a mediocre prgrammer

You could take a look at sourcegraph Cody

Took your suggestion and just applied. Just curious though, why the recommendation ?

Hey looks super interesting, would definitely try it out. Having worked in a similar VC funded big Api Dev Platform, would love to hear your thoughts on how the team is planning to address eventual enshittification due to VC pressures.