[natefinch]

AI can code low level stuff. This one function. This small piece of logic. What it can't do is conceive of how to take a bunch of different functions and put them together to produce an actual product. It can't tell you if you should use postges or mongo. Programmers will always be needed, we'll just move up the stack, and we'll produce more value per hour of our work, justifying our high salaries.

Compare the visible output of someone writing in assembly vs someone writing on top of a modern web framework. Is assembly harder? Yeah. But the web framework is going to give you a usable product in a fraction of the time with way more features. And that's worth more money to the company you work for.

It's always going to be a knowledge worker's job. It's always going to reward experience and creativity and attention to detail. A lot of programming is looking at the world, seeing a gap in what exists, and figuring out what best fits that gap. An AI can't do that. Programming is making 1000 tiny decisions that can't possibly be specified completely by a product manager and need a human to weigh the tradeoffs.

[CRConrad]

> AI can code low level stuff. This one function. This small piece of logic. What it can't do is conceive of how to take a bunch of different functions and put them together to produce an actual product.

Thats what everybody in the chess world said: "AI can decide low level stuff. This one move. This small attack on a rook. What it can't do is conceive of how to take a bunch of different tactics and put them together to produce a game of chess."

...Until Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov.

> It can't tell you if you should use postges or mongo.

Yeah, and then came: "It may be able to play chess, but it can't tell you how to play Go."

Look how that went.