> We are going from the era of manual, line-by-line mental model transcription to one where software engineers can focus on data structures, software architecture and algorithms.

AI is getting good at picking those as well. Frontier models can be fed a vague problem, analyze the code base, and pick out an architectural solution that makes sense.

We're going from a world that needs specialized "software engineers" to speak the language of the machine into one where ordinary people need only sit down and think, "what exactly would solve my problem here?", spell it out in ordinary procedural language, and get a software solution that employs best practices without the intervention of professional computer-touchers.

Tim Bryce was right 20 years ago. Abolish programmers, bring back systems analysts!