[fc417fc802]

That depends entirely on what's meant by "will be fine" and "AI will liberate them". I was assuming you meant something along the lines of gainful employment. If instead you meant performing a meaningful task then I'd counter that most engineers like to build finished products not wallow in minutia. You can still hand roll assembly but I don't think many developers lament the advent of the modern compiler. Instead people build far more complicated systems than would otherwise have been possible.

[plastic-enjoyer]

Sure, but the compiler didn't promote the assembly programmer, it basically ended assembly programming. So which side of that is the engineer on? You're assuming we're the dev who got the compiler. But if the premise is that AI does the actual problem-solving, then we're the assembly and AI is the compiler.

> Engineers like to build finished products, not wallow in minutia

This only works if what you loved was having built the thing. If what you loved was the building itself, the solving, then "here's a way bigger system, the AI figured it out" isn't a win. It's just a promotion from maker to manager. And a lot of engineers specifically tried to avoid this promotion in their career.

[fc417fc802]

My impression is that most developers are motivated to create a finished product for a variety of reasons. If what someone enjoys is the craft purely for its own sake then isn't the resulting situation exactly the same as for artists assuming a hypothetical future where the core activities of both are largely automated? Such people can still engage in the craft purely for their own enjoyment just as anyone who wants to is free to write assembly by hand today.