2023-06-16 08:00:28
Writing for the masses in This is the end of programming as we know it. (And I’m feeling good) NY Times opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo explains that while AI might not spell the end of programming (“the world will still need people with advanced coding skills”), it could usher in a new kind of programming. of programming: “one that does not require us to learn code, but instead transforms human language instructions into software.”
“Isn’t coding supposed to be one of the must-see careers of the digital age?” Manjoo asks. “In the decades since I dallied with my [ZX] Spectrumcomputer programming went from being a nerdy hobby to an almost vocational imperative, the one skill that must be acquired to survive the technological dislocation, no matter how absurd or insensitive the advice sounds. Joe Biden told the coal miners: learn to program ! Twitter trolls told fired journalists: Learn to program! Tim Cook told French children : ¡Learn to program! Programming may still be a skill worth learning, if only as an intellectual exercise, but it would have been foolish to think of it as an isolated effort from the very automation it was enabling. For much of the history of computing, coding has followed a path toward greater simplicity.”
In closing, Manjoo points out that AI has alleviated one of his concerns (a Shared by President Obama ). “I’ve tried to introduce my two sons to programming the way my father did for me, but they both found it like a nap. Their disinterest in coding has been one of my disappointments as a parent, not to mention a source of anxiety that might be out of step with the future.(I live in Silicon Valley, where kids seem to learn to code before they learn to read.) But now I’m a little less worried.By the time they’re looking for careers, the coding can be as outdated as my first PC.”
By the way, there are many comments, over 700 and counting, in Manjoo’s column on programming types and others about whether the reports of the death of programming are greatly exaggerated. Via Slashdot.
#NYT #programming