I think the conclusion about software engineering having the potential of being both the first and last job to be automated by AI makes sense. It is an extremely unequal profession. The skill difference between a junior with 1 year of experience and a senior with 20 years of both diverse and deep experience (of relentless striving) is massive. They have very different capabilities. The level of software sophistication/complexity they can attain is very different. The code produced looks very different.
This is not a profession where you've figured it all out after 5 years and can rest on your laurels. I think it takes literally 15+ years for most highly determined and intelligent people to even approach that state where they can manage complexity effectively. Most people never seem to get there.
Almost 15 years in and I feel like I am still just scratching the surface.
But most of the lessons learned during that time go towards quality, not quantity or speed. The current trend with LLMs (and eventually maybe AI) seems to be doing what humans can do worse but significantly faster and cheaper. Unfortunately, not everyone needs or cares about safety, security or correctness.
I am afraid software will mirror the evolution of physical products from the industrial revolution to present day. It feels like the quality of consumer grade products is constantly decreasing.
This resonates. Quality of mass market products decrease to the upper limit of the average person's perception/expectations... Which itself seems to be declining over time.
Even then software constantly evolves, and rot is everywhere. And we're far from having the "best possible" software solution in literally every area (if that's even possible to measure), rather just endless room for improvement.
And I don't see it being improved with whatever any llm chugs out, at least not "in-depth".
This is not a profession where you've figured it all out after 5 years and can rest on your laurels. I think it takes literally 15+ years for most highly determined and intelligent people to even approach that state where they can manage complexity effectively. Most people never seem to get there.