If your trade as a programmer is in automating tasks with computers... I can see how it might seem like OpenAI is your Squarespace. Most users were never going

If your trade as a programmer is in automating tasks with computers... I can see how it might seem like OpenAI is your Squarespace. Most users were never going to learn to code no matter how well we designed scripting languages, macros, etc for them. Just like there was nothing stopping them from learning HTML or using any of the available tools for building their own websites. They still paid people to do it for them. Now we're at a moment where they don't need to pay such people anymore... just like when Squarespace-et-al killed off the need to hire a web developer to build your website. I don't think Djikstra would be appalled in the sense that the author gives it. He wasn't saying that C++ or Python were precise languages; they wouldn't be precise enough for him. He wouldn't be appalled that we don't write programs in them. He would be appalled that we don't write precise specifications. ChatGPT-4 can generate code. Is it the correct code? We don't know unless we specify what correct means in a precise and unambiguous way. Natural language isn't precise enough to do that. We have a language for that called, mathematics. ChatGPT-4 is not very good at understanding or speaking this language for the time being. What matters is whether ChatGPT-4-generated-code is good enough for your problem. Generate a script to organize some files or help you with small tasks where correctness isn't crucial? Go ahead. I don't pull out a whiteboard and fire up a theorem prover when I'm organizing a photo collection. However, if I'm working on a system and have a theory that we can parallelize an algorithm over a complex data structure and it's critical that this is done correctly or the system cannot be trusted? I wouldn't think twice before firing up TLA+ or Lean 4. For now, ChatGPT-4 cannot reason and think for you. The industry isn't over, in my opinion. It's annoying. It's noisier. But not over.