The very existence of a “do anything” tool causes humans to forgo learning the multitude of tools we already have. I suspect there will be no next generation of software engineers.
People said stuff like that in the 90s. I was there.
In the same way that most people are no longer proficient in assembly, but it has not spelled doom for software engineering, some folks are now using AI tools, and it will probably be fine. The day to day work flow of a typical programmer will probably be different ten or twenty years from now, and we will all move on, as usual.
I don't think software engineering will disappear, but it could change a lot, potentially. More understanding the needs of the end consumer, more writing specifications, less raw coding and debugging. Maybe fewer programmers will be needed, and that would not be the end of the world.
It's not about different tools, it's about how the old tools are NOT obsolete either and have their place. One should still use them as well, even in conjunction with LLMs if one wishes to. (hell they could ask the llm to find the correct schema online and add that one comment at the top)
Oh wait - that's an anachronism. The older generation of IDEs, like VS and Eclipse, had toolbars. VSCode doesn't have one.