[bigstrat2003]

> Because the programming is and was always a means to an end.

No. Programming is a specific act (writing code), and that act is also a means to an end. But getting to the goal does not mean you did programming. Saying "I'm good at programming" when you are just using LLMs to generate code for you is like saying "I'm good at driving" when you only ever take an Uber and don't ever drive yourself. It's complete nonsense. If you aren't programming (as the OP clearly said he isn't), then you can't be good at programming because you aren't doing it.

[NewsaHackO]

I guess I agree with you, but I think the GP may have mispoke and meant he loves building software. It's sort of like the difference between knitting and making clothes. The GP likely loves making clothes on an abstract basis and realized that he won't have to knit anymore to do so. And he really never liked knitting in the first place, as it was just a means to an end.

[datavalue]

It’s similar to the arrival of mechanized looms in the 19th century. My ancestors were weavers, and automation eventually replaced those jobs. I’ve spent 40 years working in IT as a programmer and am now nearing retirement, so I’ve been fortunate. To me it feels like programming as a skill may not have much time left. Probably how my ancestors felt.

[NewsaHackO]

Yeah, I was reading a little bit about knitting before my post and saw that in 1589, a person who invented a sort of prototype to the automated knitting machine in the UK had his patent application denied by the queen due to taking jobs away from hand knitters. I guess back then they had to be a little more protective because it would be a lot easier for civil unrest to lead to revolution and civil war in postfeudal UK than now.

[munk-a]

Most people who are knitting do it purely for the experience of knitting. If you need clothes it's far more affordable to buy the cheap manufactured stuff. Some people certainly enjoy the creativity of expression and wish they could get to that easier - but most of those people have moved away from manual tasks like knitting and instead just draw or render their imagination. There's genuine value in making things by hand as the process allows us time to study our goal and shape our technique mid-approach. GP may legitimately like knitting more than making clothes.

[NewsaHackO]

I think you misunderstood my post. Now many people do knitting for the joy of knitting, but people used to knit to create clothing to wear or to sell. Of course, automated knitting machines have largely replaced hand knitting, and people now still do it. If you are very good at hand knitting, you might see if you can sell some work. However, if you want to make knitted clothing at scale, you would be better served taking a high-level approach to the actual design of the clothing and learning how to prompt the automated knitting machine to do so instead of optimizing for how you yourself would hand knit it.

[munk-a]

That would be a maximally economically efficient approach to producing knit clothes - but hand knit clothing still does have a significant market. This year I sought out a cobbler to get a new pair of shoes because my feet are a bit weird and the machine templates for what a foot should look like doesn't produce something I can comfortably wear. If you personally derive value from putting in the manual labor to produce "artisanal" goods in most fields you can find a market willing to pay the premium for your labor. This market is much smaller than the machine-driven equivalent so it can't support nearly the same quantity of producers as the market supported before automation came along but it is a niche you can operate within.

I don't disagree with your main thesis that an automated knitting machine can out produce hand-knit goods but I do think you're under appreciating that there still is a market for the non-automated goods. Even if they can't compete for the majority of the market markets are weird and non-uniform so those skills do still feed into a market.

[pdntspa]

I'm still reading the code, I'm still correcting the LLM's laughably awful architecture and abstractions, and I'm still spending large chunks of time in the design and planning phase with the LLM. The only thing it does is write the code.

But that's not programming because its a natural-language conversation?

[bakugo]

> But that's not programming because its a natural-language conversation?

Correct. Programming is writing code. You are not writing code, therefore you are not programming. I don't understand what's so complicated about this.

[pdntspa]

I'm literally making a program. Present-progressive of the verb to program. I feel like you're pearl-clutching on semantics. By my read, programming != writing code, but writing code is most definitely programming. Oxford defines 'to program' as both.

[bakugo]

You're not making a program. You're managing the AI that is making a program. You're a manager, maybe a designer or architect too, but not a programmer.

These are well defined roles that existed well before AI. You don't get to redefine them just because you feel like you should get to be part of some imaginary "programmers' club" without doing the actual thing that defines the "programmer" role.

[pdntspa]

If you micromanage the mechanic, then yeah you might get production credits for fixing the car.

You could argue that I'm playing the manager, sure. I guess people who write software with nocode or visual data flow tools aren't programming in some form either? They aren't 'visual programming'? What about if I draw buttons and text boxes on a form in Visual Basic? I haven't hooked up the events yet, but that isn't programming?

Would you say that I am not programming if I make a synthesizer in Reaktor or Max? What about using blueprints in Unreal? Are those not programming?

This assertion that programming requires writing code is incorrect. I suspect the distinction cuts a little too close to home, which is why we are arguing semantics here.

[000ooo000]

It's sad to watch the mental gymnastics at play. I guess by asking my mechanic to service my car, I'm a mechanic too? I want it > it gets done > I am the doer. Ridiculous.

[000ooo000]

No sane person would argue Person A is a concreter if Person A is telling Person B to do concreting and Person B does the concreting. Doesn't matter if Person A had elaborate plans for the concrete, or if Person A owns the concrete afterwards. These are long-established ideas. You can twist it and argue "semantics!" all you want but it will never take with anyone but the Person A's.

[californical]

I mean, yes - you’re reviewing and architecting, but not creating.

Same as if you use an image diffusion model. You can describe very clearly what you want, and iterate carefully until you get a picture that looks good. But nobody would say that they “drew a nice picture”, since they haven’t done any drawing.

(except maybe the mega-power-users who use the tool and have a warped view of their accomplishment)

[pdntspa]

I'll never say that I wrote the code, because I didn't.

[snackerblues]

>wrote the code

aka programmed.