Raymond Fu

Veteran technologist, serial entrepreneur, and computer-science educator. Professor at California Science & Technology University (CSTU). Father to a CS-major daughter, which he frames as a motivating lens for "is software engineering still worth learning?"

Recurring framings

• "AI raises the floor; software engineers raise the ceiling" — direct echo of Andrej Karpathy's Vibe Coding-vs-Agentic Engineering split, in different language
• AI as a brilliant junior developer — fast, capable, needs vision/validation from the human; same mental model Karpathy and Boris Cherny independently adopt
• The 55/30 paradox — 55% of devs use Copilot, only 30% accept its output unchanged. "If you're not in 55%, you're in trouble. If you're in the 30%, you may be in bigger trouble." The acceptance-without-edit number is the de-skilling proxy.
• "Programmer" is the wrong word now — the SWE of the AI era is a visionary, bridge-builder, leader of humans + AI, not a text-executor

The future-SWE curriculum he proposes

1. Master foundations (data structures, algorithms, programming concepts) — more important, not less
2. Think like an architect; aim for senior-engineer expectations early
3. Go full-stack across disciplines (design, product, data, PM)
4. Practice communication and collaboration via team projects
5. Use AI as a creative partner — learn LLMs, fine-tuning, RAG
6. Stay adaptable — "tools change, principles last"

Sources

• Learning Software Engineering During the Era of AI (Raymond Fu, TEDxCSTU)