I generally agree that it's difficult and counterproductive to try to eliminate talented programmers who put together the core of systems and set up the patterns that things like LLMs can emulate.
But, the modal programmer at this point is some person who attended a front-end coding bootcamp for a few months and basically just knows how to chain together CSS selectors and React components. I do think these people are in big trouble.
So, while the core, say, 10% of people I think should remain in the system. This 90% periphery of pretty bad programmers will probably need to move on to other jobs.
Oh:D I have a feeling that the bad programmers won't move anywhere. There is one reason for it. Code part is probably the smallest piece while most of the stuff is in getting actual business requirements that worth a lick.
The best engineers do something besides "getting" requirements. They usually are able to re-interpret, contextualize and evolve them.
Surprisingly, a lot of times programmers are better bring in business experience from other organizations that the business people at the current one don't possess.
So are you saying that bad programmers play a dual role of attending meetings to get business requirements, in a way that AI cannot do?
I am saying, having seen stuff implemented that simply does not make sense to anyone with an understanding of the actual situation on the ground, yes. And the funny thing is, it is not even an llm issue. This is a very, very human issue.
So is the actual work of programming is mostly just sitting in meetings where business people and programmers slowly muddle through requirements?
The actual work happens in the head. I suspect you know this. Now, there is a clear benefit to being able to flatten some of the issues related to coding, but do you really think, any of it can be done without those meetings and muddling through those requirements? At the very least, there needs to be one person that understands what is actually needed.
I mean.. I am ok with you saying saying yes. In a sense, I half expect it. I will be very subtle, I don't believe the issue lies with the tooling ( AI or not ).
I spend an unusually small proportion of my life in meetings, probably an idiosyncratic feature of my job.
My impression is that the main reason most people have so many meetings is because meetings are equated to work. If you are in a meeting, you are at work and you need to work. This is because, in a meeting, everyone is looking at everyone else with the expectation that they are working. But if you are not in a meeting, this expectation doesn't exist, so you are basically not at work and you don't need to work.
In particular, thinking only occurs during meetings. And if it didn't happen during a meeting, it didn't happen.
Call me cynical, but it explains immediately why the vast majority of companies don't tolerate remote work unless they're forced to by a pandemic. Office work means someone could be watching you outside meetings, which causes some work to happen outside of meetings and raises productivity.
During the 90’s economic crisis all drafters drawing building blueprints by hand disappeared from the Swedish construction industry. Engineers started using CAD instead
Just one example of how this has happened again and again.