Code generation tools of today are pretty good at writing the boring boilerplate. I think the author is aware of this. But what happens when they get really go

Code generation tools of today are pretty good at writing the boring boilerplate. I think the author is aware of this. But what happens when they get really good at generating the not-so-boring bits? They're much better at this than they were a year or two ago, so it's not unthinkable that they will continue to improve. I'm a firm "AI" skeptic, and don't buy into the hype. It's clear that the brute force approach of throwing more data and compute at the problem has reached diminishing returns. And yet there is ample room for improvement by applying solid engineering alone. Most of what we've seen in the past year is based on this: MCP, "agents", "skills", etc. > I would code even if I didn't get paid for it. That's great, but once the market value of your work diminishes, it's no longer a career—it's a hobby. Which doesn't mean there won't be demand for artisanal programming, but it won't power the world anymore. It will be a niche skill we rely on for very specific tasks, while our jobs will be relegated to steer and assist the "AI" into producing reliable software. At least in the short-term. It's doubtful whether the current path will get us to a place where these tools are fully self-sufficient, and it's arguable whether that's something worth aiming for anyway. This is the bleak present and future the article is talking about. Being an assistant to code generation tools is far removed from the practice of programming. I personally find it tedious, unengaging, and extremely boring. There's little joy in the experience beyond ending up with a working product. The road to get there is not a journey of discovery, serendipity, learning, and dopamine hits. It is a slog of writing software specs, juggling contextual information and prompts, and coaxing a human facsimile into producing working software by using natural language. I dislike every part of this process. This is not the type of work that inspired me to do this professionally. Sure, every job has tasks we sometimes don't enjoy. But once you remove programming from the equation, there's not much joy in it left for me.