[ShamelessC]

> Mediocre programmers use APIs, while good programmers know what's behind the curtain and can debug them. I suspect this will stay the same, no matter how many layers of abstraction we add.

The skill of both such categories (API developers and developers who use API's) is defined by the ability to know the _least_ amount of complexity needed for a given set of requirements. You may be appealing to some "deeper" sense of what it means to be a programmer, but in terms of what companies are willing to pay - if you get the same job done in a way that is easier to do in the future, you should be rewarded for that, because it saves your own time and the time of anyone who will need to work on that program in the future.

I think this is (only mildly) lacking in nuance. The ability to use AI for this task is surely limited at the moment - and people who know more about programming are certainly more capable of using these systems. As we go forward though, it's important to be able to admit that if an AI can produce a solution faster (and you have easy access to said AI, not a given), then you may be wasting time trying to "roll your own" in pursuit of being a good programmer.

On the other hand, until this AI-assisted experience is democratized, you're correct that it is a good idea to have engineers around who know this stuff from first principles. For now, I'm not terribly concerned that those folks will go away.

[andybak]

> Mediocre programmers use APIs, while good programmers know what's behind the curtain and can debug them.

Personally I'd like to not know what's behind the curtain until I have to. Which category does that put me in?

[Filligree]

Probably in the second category, if you’re able to look behind the curtains on demand. A lot of programmers can’t.