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Programming remains a deeply misunderstood, and often disrespected, medium. Any time someone tries to claim that we "won't need programmers anymore" in the futu
by jaredcwhite 2y ago
Programming remains a deeply misunderstood, and often disrespected, medium. Any time someone tries to claim that we "won't need programmers anymore" in the future to accomplish X, Y, or Z, I simply behold somebody who doesn't understand the medium.
Of course I understand that the "sweet spots" of logic, design, and platform architecture shifts over time. I can work at a higher level of abstraction now than I did when I started out writing PHP in 1999. I'm also willing to believe low-code/no-code solutions or turnkey solutions will get better over time. There's a reason I don't try to find restaurant clients to build a glorified menu website for anymore.
But the hoopla around LLMs has only served to reinforce the disconnect between the people who express artistry in code and the people who see programming as nothing more than a "feature-implementation-pipeline" that's ripe for rote automation. I'd expect as much from folks in marketing, or CEOs, but to see so many CTOs make public claims they must privately know is simply bullshit…well, that's shaken my faith in this industry, I'll tell you that much.
I'm feeling optimistic though. The tides are turning against generative AI and when the hype cycle is finally over, we'll have a handful of narrowly-purposeful, ethically-engineered models which provide some specific yet useful productivity gains…and beyond that, it'll just be the slow-but-steady progress of the discipline of hand-writing code.