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Comment by aprilfoo | Hacker News Reader

That's really interesting, but i'm wondering if this is as rational as it looks.

> we are going to be kinda of obsolete in what defined us, as a profession: the ability to write code

Is it a fact, really? I don't think "writing code" is a defining factor, maybe it's a prerequisite, as being able to write words hardly defines "a novelist".

Anyway, prompt writing skills might become obsolete quite soon. So the main question might be to know which trend of technological evolution to pick and when, in order not to be considered obsolete. A crystal ball might still be more relevant than LLMs for that.

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> the ability to write code

I call it "the ability to communicate intent [using a programming language]" and suddenly building with AI looks at lot more like the natural extension of what we used to do writing code by ourselves.

I don't think our profession was writing code to begin with (and this may be a bit uuhh. rewriting history?); what we do is take an idea, requirements, an end goal and make it reality. Often times that involves writing code, but that's only one aspect of the software developer's job.

Analogy time because comment sections love analogies. A carpenter can hammer nails, screw screws, make holes, saw wood to size. If they then use machines to make that work easier, do they stop being carpenters?

It's good if not essential to be able to write code. It's more important to know what to write and when. Best thing to do at this point is to stop attaching one's self-worth with the ability to write code. That's like a novelist (more analogies) who praises their ability to type at 100wpm. The 50 shades books proved you don't need to either touch type (the first book was mostly written on a blackberry apparently) or be good at writing to be successful, lol.

As a specific example of this, the U.S. 18F team had helped the Forest Service a decade ago with implementing a requirement to help people get a permit to cut down a Christmas tree.

Although there was a software component for the backend, the thing that the actual user ended up with was a printed-out form rather than a mobile app or QR code. This was a deliberate design decision (https://greacen.com/media/guides/2019/02/12/open-forest-laun...), not due to a limitation of software.

Agreed - as I see it, it's akin to the transitions from machine code -> assembly language -> C -> Javascript. As time went by, knowing the deep internals of the machine became less and less necessary, even though having that knowledge still gives an engineer a useful insight into their work and often makes them better at their job. The goal remains the same - make the computer do the thing; only the mechanism changes as the tools evolve.

"-> AI" is just the next step along that journey. Maybe it will end at "-> AGI" and then humans will engage in programming mostly for the craft and the pleasure of it, like other crafts that were automated away over the ages.

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