[nmrm]

I tend to both agree and disagree with this assessment.

Highly skilled programmers, as well as programmers whose jobs are dominated by both design and implementation, will probably be one of the last professions to be replaced by AI.

But there are a lot of programmers who could be replaced by automation (although various constrained, "domain-specific" forms of program synthesis working on concert with ever-improving development environments, libraries and frameworks are probably more likely culprits.

edit: In other words, the general problem of replacing programmers is AI-complete, but not ever programming task/job requires full generality.

[davmre]

This is definitely an argument against certain cookie-cutter approaches to programming ("learn Rails in 15 days!" etc.). Even leaving AI out of the picture, a skillset that's limited to a particular language or framework is going to become obsolete much more quickly than someone who understands foundational CS concepts, approaches programming from the point of view of general problem solving, and makes an effort to keep up to date with new advances. It seems plausible that programming as a discipline will be one of the last occupations at which humans are dominant, but "final-stage" programming will probably (hopefully!) look very different from the programming we do now, just as current practice differs from what was done in the 70s or 80s.