[kaushikc]

I don't care about writing code, all I care is that my work (non-tech) needs to be done. I code out of necessity to save more time, reduce labour and errors. LLM has made a non-programmer like myself and given me super powers, all I have to do is ask the right questions and I am directed to somewhat of a reasonable place to look for a solution and create ones. I can create CRUD apps, use api's and various stacks from multiple programming languages while referencing documentation to build and practice building pretty much what I desire which could have costed me a fortune and a lot of time from professional coders, some work I could not give to anyone else for maintaining confidentiality.

[bruce511]

I've spent my career working in and on a low-code tool. For 30 years we've been doing what you describe; allowing non-coders to generate working applications that solve business problems.

It's similar to the way that Excel exposed non programmers to data manipulation.

Lots of people had very successful careers building software this way. They created a valuable product with mostly just domain knowledge and not programming knowledge.

But there are boundaries to this approach. Because they lack the fundamentals, they're (mostly) unable to understand what something is doing or how something works. So there's a skilled group providing assistance (paid) whenever they hit a boundary.

AI won't make programmers go away. But it will both expand the reach of "writing programs" to more people, and simultaneously replace "unskilled" programmers.

As more joe public writes code, more programmers will ultimately be needed to support those Joe's. And in some cases, just like spreadsheets, the help might be "we need to throw all this away and build it correctly."

[hyperG]

I am in the same spot as a non-software engineer.

If you are using multiple programming languages though you really can't say you are a non-programmer.

I just got up and running with Julia in like two weeks when I didn't even know what Julia was 3 weeks ago.

On the other hand, I have the digital audio workstation Reaper installed. It is one thing for LLMs to write crud apps and data science scripts but to write a digital audio workstation(something I have 25 years of experience as a user), as a non-software engineer I wouldn't even know how to begin. Even if I could compile the code to play an audio file with a volume knob, the gulf is so huge. I wouldn't be able to add more than a few features before it would become totally unmanageable since I don't know what I am doing.

Much of what makes LLMs so impressive is we have such low expectations of modern software. They have broken the market for demo CRUD apps. Beyond that though I wouldn't trust anything cursor and I make.

[mejutoco]

It sounds like you care about writing code and are learning to code. And that is a good thing.

[alphabettsy]

How is it different for you than using StackOverflow and GitHub?

[tourmalinetaco]

LLM + search is far more powerful and intuitive than searching alone. I can actually explain what I want, what problems I have, and what I don’t want and it will (kinda) follow the directions laid out. It doesn’t always work, but it also hasn’t been too difficult to troubleshoot either. It absolutely cannot fix itself though, so if you can’t find the problem then you‘re very much stuck. All in all, it‘s different because it lets me delegate writing the code while I can focus on designing the program/problem solving, which I enjoy more anyway.

It doesn’t make non-programmers programmers, and it doesn’t make junior devs into senior devs, but at least for more basic problems/well-defined projects it can help turn a night of typing away into a night of development.