The thing I like about software dev is that as I get better at it I get better at thinking and problem solving.

I use AI rarely, but I use it to try to learn. For example, gnuplot is pretty complicated, so I'll ask it to create some examples and that's allowed me to learn way faster than trying to parse out the man page. AI is great for this, even though that's not how most people use it.

Some parts of software dev will likely be automated away (just like compilers automated conversion to binary and some parts of optimization), but I think ultimately software dev will become more important over time. Natural languages have low information density and high ambiguity. Programming languages are the opposite. So I think programming will always be a thing.

Think about music. It's not written in natural language, even though it could. We continue to use musical notation because it is the best way to communicate music. I believe the best way to have unambiguous, information-dense, logical communication with a computer is with a programming language.