[skydhash]

> AIs might really get good enough that none of us write code anymore, in the same way that it's quite rare to write assembly code now.

I don't have much hope for that, because the move from assembly to higher level programming languages is a result of finding patterns that are highly deterministic. It's the same as metaprogramming currently. It's not much about writing the code to solve a problem, but to find the hidden mechanism behind a common class of problems and then solve that instead. Then it becomes easier to solve each problem inside the class. LLMs are not reliable for that.

> 2. We're still writing, editing, and debugging code artifacts, but with much better tools.

I'd put a lot more weight on that, but we've already have a lot of tooling that we don't even use (or replicate across software ecosystems). I'd care much more about a nice debugger for go than LLMs tooling. Or a modern smalltalk.

But as you point out, the issue is not tooling. It's understanding. And LLMs can't help with anything if you're not improving that.

[0]: https://lisp-docs.github.io/cl-language-reference/chap-6/g-c...

[sanderjd]

I probably should have specified: I didn't list those in the order of what I put most weight on. I agree with you that I more heavily weight the one I wrote as #2.

I think you and I probably mostly agree on where things are heading, except that just inferring from your comment, I might be more bullish than you on how much AIs will help us develop those "much better tools".