Absolutely. I mean someday, whenever that is, who knows. But this time around, and the whole LLM architecture behind it... definitely won't replace competent pr

Absolutely. I mean someday, whenever that is, who knows. But this time around, and the whole LLM architecture behind it... definitely won't replace competent programmers, except at the extremes. The test I apply in my own mind is this: If it could be done 10x better, but at the same cost, would it be worth it? There's so much software architecture and implementation of software-intensive systems to be done that to me the answer is clearly yes for those jobs. But the same holds true for a soldier, or a surgeon. OTOH will applied statistics models replace writers? Like of daily news? Sure. But only if they were already writing undifferentiated crap. Because you're already producing shit, nobody cares about the quality, so yep. But should humans even be doing those jobs? I'm reminded of a (very surprising!) argument I had with a girlfriend in 2004. I was working on robots and I was explaining to her how robots could be trained to pick up litter and dog shit in industrial parks and university campuses, etc, so no human would ever again have to do those jobs. She was incensed: What about the old guys who just need an easy job?! What are they gonna do?! I have to admit I was stumped for an answer. Because in the incompletely-visualized world I was looking forward to, not picking up dog shit every day was an unqualified win... but what? Did everybody have UBI or housing or something? I hadn't really thought it through. But anyway, the programming jobs this generation of applied statistics LLM automatons are going to take away are the picking up dog shit jobs. Which Copilot already does for me daily, and I really appreciate it and am more productive for it. For $20/month or whatever it is a great deal. But for even $500 it would be laughable.