BinaryIgor

Exactly. Verification is not cheap at all

"I have a hard time imagining a future where knowing how to solve problems with computers and how to control the complexity of those solutions is less valuable than it is today, so I think it will continue to be a viable career even with the advent of AI tools."

Exactly! So the nature of what we do might change; but, solving problems with computers will always be the thing. And the most capable people of doing that will be those we call programmers - what does it mean exactly, the nature of exact activities they perform will continue to change (as it arguably always have been), but there always be somebody who is significantly more adept at solving problems and create solutions using software - that somebody we will continue to call a computer programmer/software developer.

That's a valid point - I largely agree with you, I can make it generate mostly corrected & acceptable code with a solid level of quality, given smaller & scoped features and detailed prompts. I'm just not at all convinced that it's a net productivity boost - you must take your time for these detailed prompts and then verify the output, which is less of the case when you write the thing from scratch.

It certainly speed up some things, slows down others; for learning - a great resource! For generating code I'm on the fence, still experimenting; for now, I write some code manually, some with Claude, working on the hybrid setup. My intuition tells my that a flexible use of this tool will prove to be the most optimal - writing some code manually, some with LLms, depending on both the task and the programmer knowledge, experience and skills.

I think that the bottom line is that the bottlenecks are - the specific model you use & your skills, experience and reasoning capacity (intelligence); and you control only the latter, so focus on that!

"Perhaps there are frontiers of digital addiction we have yet to reach. Maybe one day we’ll all have Neuralinks that beam Instagram Reels directly into our primary visual cortex, and then reading will really be toast."

Even then, smart people will care about dissecting ideas, explore new concepts and broaden their understanding - and for most of it, Text Is King.

It also the most portable - no codecs, no formats and standards; most English texts are just ASCII :)

Hunger and drive can definitely lead to unexpected initially results; they cannot replace relevant experience, but if somebody has at least done something similar, it's often worth making a bet on them!

There also is an interesting paradox in experience and motivation; often the most experienced and best people on paper are unfortunately the least motivated, least hungry - burn out and boredom do their part.

What makes you think that they will just keep improving? It's not obvious at all, we might soon hit a ceiling, if we haven not already - time will tell.

There are lots of technologies that have been 99% done for decades; it might be the same here.

I don't know whether I would go that extreme, but I also often find myself faster writing code manually; for some tasks though and contextually, AI-assisted coding is pretty useful, but you still must be in the driving seat, at all times.

Good take though.