[jfengel]

An artist friend the other day posted a meme to the tune of "Artists will be displaced when clients are able to express their desires clearly. I'm not worried for my job."

Programmers are really artists that way. Our job is not to program computers. Our job is to figure out the client's needs. The implementation on the computer is a matter of craft. That is, it's a skill we've practiced and honed, but it's not the essence of our job. It's not the artistry, any more than holding a paintbrush is the artistry.

It's why I've long discouraged programmers from thinking of themselves as computer jockeys. A lot of developers pat themselves on the back for skills that aren't really that important -- jobs that computers can do better than we can. That was true even before AI, such as the interminable worry about "optimizations" that are better solved by compilers, libraries, and hardware.

I don't doubt that some artists will be replaced by Canva, with worse but acceptable results, and that some developers will be replaced by AI. But there's still a lot of room for us human beings to do what we're actually good at -- being human ourselves and knowing what other humans need. The more you think of yourself as somebody who writes code and are not a "people person", the more you should rightly worry for your job.