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Comment by antipaul | Hacker News Reader

It’s not really the end of “big data”. There is and will be tons of data to go around for the foreseeable future.

Instead, it feels more like the end of “data science as the sexiest job of the 21st century”.

DS is mostly running reports (so BI) or stats (perennially important niche) or manufacturing hype via “latest research”.

Engineering has been, is, and will continue to be the foundation for success.

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Engineers usually think so. After spending some time with GitHub Copilot, as annoying as it is, I think we've got a decade, max, before the lower 3/4 of the software development trade is rendered unnecessary.

Downvote all you want but prove me wrong.

Hacker News doesn't work that way: We won't be able to reply to your comment in ten years when we know how it went.

I was using the word prove colloquially. That many professions are being automated is a given, and with NN people are trying extra hard to automate knowledge work that requires more trade-like knowledge than theoretical knowledge, like paraprofessionals and functionaries with domain knowledge. Recent developments in software lead me and many others to believe the automation of utilitarian development jobs is impending. Even Forbes thinks so and I guarantee you they hadn't seen GitHub Copilot when this article came out: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2021/02/23/11...

So, given that enough industry analysts believe development will be heavily automated to make top-10 lists, and recent developments provide even stronger evidence (copilot writes better comments on existing code than my coworkers,) can someone providence a strong a priori argument or maybe even empirical evidence that utilitarian software development is somehow uniquely immune to this?

It may be the case that I wasn't being entirely serious.

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