Its also creating a generation of non-programmers who can now program
But on the other side does society also need highly educated experts, with deep understanding of things and the ability to find and prevent the s** which will harm us. This is not limited to IT, it's the same in every area.
Education prevents disaster. But AI prevents education, maybe. We will see how this will play out for us. Maybe the AI-Overlord won't be just a joke anymore at some point, and benevolent AGIs can replace the necessary experts.
I used to be a non-programmer (although extremely technically advanced). I was very good with the terminal because I always played around with ADB and other things. I even wrote Windows batch scripts (but looking at them now is embarrassing. I used a lot of repetition instead of loops).
When ChatGPT became available, and my friend taught me how to use it to write Python scripts, I went all in. I didn't write a word of my own code. I just copy /pasted Chatgpt's output into notepad++. It was really annoying sometimes to get ChatGPT to change a simple thing. It hallucinated often and "fixed" stupid things I didn't ask for help with. I used all these scripts for various personal things. For example, it made me a GUI to edit the metadata of every .mp3 in a folder).
After several months of exposure to code, I knew the basic syntax and tried to code myself when I could, and Stack Overflow was a big help. I still had very basic skills and didnt even know what a `class` was.
Fast forward to now, I consider myself extremely good at Python, and decent in other languages. I now use classes and dataclasses all the time. I always add type hints to my code. I follow Python PEPs and try to design my code to be short, maintainable, and to the point. If a library lacks documentation, I just read the source code. I started using an IDE, and the intellisense is really a step up from using notepad++.
I still use copilot, but I refuse to paste large code blocks from any llm. It makes the code so much harder to maintain. If I really do like the code chatgpt gave me when I get stuck, I write it myself, instead of copy/paste.
I don't know if everyone has the same experience as me, but I would certainly say that ChatGPT helped me become a successful programmer.
I've seen in some companies, relatively trivial tickets are bounced from developer to developer for months and management believing these are hard to do.
Edit: Arvind Naranyan of AI Snake Oil uses LLMs to create "one-time-use" apps, mostly little games or educational things for his kids. As an AI skeptic I think this is cool and should be celebrated. But there is a serious downside when using it blindly for real work.
I have never liked the term "can program" anyway, programming is the easy part....
User: { AI generated 1600 line handler "getUsers" with sql injection, n+1 queries, an exposed secret, plaintext passwords and credit cards, and lots of unused variables }