this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
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Let me weigh in with something. The hard part about programming is not the code. It is in understanding all the edge cases, making flexible solutions and so much more.
I have seen many organizations with tens of really capable programmers that can implement anything. Now, most management barely knows what they want or what the actual end goal is. Since managers aren't capable of delivering perfect products every time with really skilled programmers, if i subtract programmers from the equation and substitute in a magic box that delivers code to managers whenever they ask for it, the managers won't do much better. The biggest problem is not knowing what to ask for, and even if you DO know what to ask for, they typically will ignore all the fine details.
By the time there is an AI intelligent enough to coordinate a large technical operation, AIs will be capable of replacing attorneys, congressmen, patent examiners, middle managers, etc. It would really take a GENERAL artificial intelligence to be feasible here, and you'd be wildly optimistic to say we are anywhere close to having one of those available on the open market.
I agree with you completely, but he did say no need for 'human programmers' not 'human software engineers. The skill set you are describing is one I would put forward is one of if not the biggest different between the two.
This is really splitting hairs, but if you asked that cloud CEO if he employed programmers or 'software engineers' he would almost certainly say the latter. The larger the company, the greater the chance they have what they consider an 'engineering' department. I would guess he employs 0 "programmers" or 'engineeringless programmers'.
Anyone in software engineering will tell you that as you get more senior you spend less time writing lines of code and more time planning, designing, testing, reviewing, and deleting code.
This will continue to be true, it's just that there will be less juniors below who's whole job is to produce code that meets a predefined spec or passes an existing test, and instead a smaller number of juniors will use AI tools to increase their productivity, while still requiring the same amount of direction and oversight. The small amounts of code the seniors write will also get smaller and faster to write, as they also use AI tools to generate boilerplate while filling in the important details.