you gotta explain why the analogy is applicable, otherwise I could do the same thing and say "I don't understand why so many people are convinced that hovercars won't replace automobiles one day." Infinite analogies could be made to support any conclusion, they aren't worth anything without reasoning(implied or explicit) for why your analogy is particularly relevant compared to others.
Tbh I am completely unsure about the AI Programmer debate, I don't have the knowledge of the AI landscape to make an informed decision. For that reason I do what I often do and make a meta-judgement based on the types of arguments made by each side.
Who is arguing that AI will replace programmers? People who are invested in AI, or people who want cheaper labor.
Who is arguing against that? Programmers who want to keep their job.
Not much to draw from that angle.
What KIND of arguments is each side making?
Programmers: specific points that touch reality directly.
AI Programmer supporters: Typically, arguments are abstract and never touch reality directly, and seem to be motivated by hype more than experience. In the past, there has been cases where the abstract dreamer hype crowd has been right, but typically there are many pre-emptive waves who are wrong(as would be expected, unless you assume that people are incapable of expecting a thing to come before it's time, then there will be waves of people who pick up on a thing before it gets here, and they will be pre-emptive).
For this reason, plus the very limited amount of AI-generated code applied to non-trivial projects that I've seen(which doesn't and shouldn't hold much weight, because I'm not super familiar with the latest tech), I'm feeling like AI replacing programmers is at least a decade off.
I also feel like people are thinking about the problem wrong in general. They are jumping from our current state to a state where we have capable AI programmers without imagining the incremental transformations in work-place structure over time. We've been going through a trend where coding language gets closer to human language since the days of punch cards, and programmers will exist as a job until that trend reaches the point where programmers are "squeezed out". By that I mean, a programmers job is to convert the intentions(not words, important distinction) of the product manager into code, from this perspective they can be considered middlemen. Programmers will exist until the day that AI is so good that a middleman is no longer needed, that a product manager can talk directly to an AI and get the desired results. Knowing how bad product managers are at explaining what they ACTUALLY need, on a concrete literal level, I think this problem is more difficult than people assume. Even if we had AI that produced perfect code that did exactly what was asked of it, I'm not sure if that'd be good enough, precisely because it does EXACTLY what is asked of it.
Tbh I am completely unsure about the AI Programmer debate, I don't have the knowledge of the AI landscape to make an informed decision. For that reason I do what I often do and make a meta-judgement based on the types of arguments made by each side.
Who is arguing that AI will replace programmers? People who are invested in AI, or people who want cheaper labor.
Who is arguing against that? Programmers who want to keep their job.
Not much to draw from that angle.
What KIND of arguments is each side making? Programmers: specific points that touch reality directly. AI Programmer supporters: Typically, arguments are abstract and never touch reality directly, and seem to be motivated by hype more than experience. In the past, there has been cases where the abstract dreamer hype crowd has been right, but typically there are many pre-emptive waves who are wrong(as would be expected, unless you assume that people are incapable of expecting a thing to come before it's time, then there will be waves of people who pick up on a thing before it gets here, and they will be pre-emptive).
For this reason, plus the very limited amount of AI-generated code applied to non-trivial projects that I've seen(which doesn't and shouldn't hold much weight, because I'm not super familiar with the latest tech), I'm feeling like AI replacing programmers is at least a decade off.
I also feel like people are thinking about the problem wrong in general. They are jumping from our current state to a state where we have capable AI programmers without imagining the incremental transformations in work-place structure over time. We've been going through a trend where coding language gets closer to human language since the days of punch cards, and programmers will exist as a job until that trend reaches the point where programmers are "squeezed out". By that I mean, a programmers job is to convert the intentions(not words, important distinction) of the product manager into code, from this perspective they can be considered middlemen. Programmers will exist until the day that AI is so good that a middleman is no longer needed, that a product manager can talk directly to an AI and get the desired results. Knowing how bad product managers are at explaining what they ACTUALLY need, on a concrete literal level, I think this problem is more difficult than people assume. Even if we had AI that produced perfect code that did exactly what was asked of it, I'm not sure if that'd be good enough, precisely because it does EXACTLY what is asked of it.