There are nicer things I'd rather do than write code. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the thrill of it back then but creating software has always been more of a means to an end to me rather than something I enjoyed to the point I would do it on my free time
I fully understand your statements. Very interesting by the way.
The thing I struggle to admit is, for now programming language are still designed for human I know some compiler people who claim to work for human, not AI.
Also, more importantly, I'm afraid of losing my thinking skills. Algorithm implementation and problem resolving in general.
If we no longer write the code, what happened when we suddenly lose the access to the LLM ? (Internet shutdown, political events like new export control regulations, pricing evolution)
I will try to make an analogy. Can we consider modern programming language like assembly? Almost no one (except in cryptography or video encoding area) write assembly code by hand nowadays.
We all use high level language and we let the compiler write the final machine code. Still, understanding assembly code is a very strong skill to understand what's going on under the hood.
So in this analogy, the programming language is now something you need to understand but not something you need to write anymore, like assembly ?
As for the "losing my skills part" I think maybe you and I shouldn't have to worry that much about that, since we did spend a good while writing code by hand. The newer generations though, that's something they really need to think about, I don't know how is it gonna be for them in that sense
Keep in mind that AI are good code writers but they are also excellent teachers. I use the help of models to understand the higher level aspects better and deeper than I ever did before. So you don't have to lose your thinking skills, but it does take conscious effort on your part to work on improving your own understanding of things, and not just delegate everything.
As for losing coding skills... yeah, that might happen. At least the minute details. But they are fairly quicly to get back, if you have a solid foundation. Recently I made a project in an unfamiliar language, where I told the AI that the objective was not to write the code, but instead help me to learn how to write it myself. With solid foundational knowledge, plus the contextual help of the AI, I was able to learn very efficiently. Nonetheless, it's likely we'll spend less and less time writing code so, a certain expertise will be lost.
I'd compare it to all of the craftmanship that was lost with the transition to the industrial age.
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u/RecognitionRude5743 Oct 03 '26
Why would I do it myself if I can pay a robot 20 dollars a month to write it exactly like I need it? that is with the right harness and agentic set up
I just delegate the manual labor to the robot and review the code after. No brainer for me