FWIW I don't agree with anything you're saying but again, I'm glad there is some debate from another side.
I suck at writing software, like bad. I can't remember syntax at all. I couldn't write working code on a whiteboard if you asked me.
But I don't know how to solve problems very well, and I'm good at understanding what people want and don't want. I do understand logic and pseudocode.
The code LLMs write is good enough for 99% of the things I need it for, and I'm not writing code that will be used in some life determining situation, and I'd wager that most aren't either.
We could debate on if my code is usable/supportable long-term, by myself or others. However, I don't see how that debate would be any different if I wrote it myself (worse) or somebody else.
Yes, it’s a very narrow-minded perspective that cannot understand the second-order implications of this development beyond their own experience as an experienced developer. For argument, let’s imagine that the quality of software at the top valley firms is just phenomenal (a stretch, as we all know, even as a hypothetical). That is obviously not the case for the quality of software at 99% of firms. One could argue that the dominance of SaaS this past decade is an artifact of the software labor market: any vaguely talented engineer could easily get a ridiculously well-paid position in the valley for a firm that sold software at great margins to all the other firms that were effectively priced out of the market for engineers. I think the most interesting case study of this is actually the gaming industry, since it’s a highly technical engineering domain where margins are quickly eroded by paying the actual market wage for enough engineers to ship a good product, leading to the decline of AAA studios. Carmack’s career trajectory from gaming industry to Meta is paradigmatic of the generational shift, here.
TLDR; in my opinion, the interesting question is less what happens at the top firms or to top engineers than what happens as the rest of the world gains access to engineering skills well above the previous floor at a reasonable price point.
Prompting is not engineering nor a skill let alone a whole engineering skill. Excel has been around democratizing programming for the businesses of any kind and people of any kind and created a lot of value, i believe it's a great product YET it didn't lowered the need of engineering people... the contrary
I suck at writing software, like bad. I can't remember syntax at all. I couldn't write working code on a whiteboard if you asked me.
But I don't know how to solve problems very well, and I'm good at understanding what people want and don't want. I do understand logic and pseudocode.
The code LLMs write is good enough for 99% of the things I need it for, and I'm not writing code that will be used in some life determining situation, and I'd wager that most aren't either.
We could debate on if my code is usable/supportable long-term, by myself or others. However, I don't see how that debate would be any different if I wrote it myself (worse) or somebody else.