>Will programming eventually be relegated to a hobby?
I don't regard programming as merely the act of outputing code. Planning, architecting, having a high level overview, keeping the objective in focus also matters.
Even if we regard programming as just writing code, we have to ask ourselves why we do it.
We plant cereals to be able to eat. At first we used some primitive stone tools to dig the fields. Then we used bronze tools, then iron tools. Then we employed horses to plough the fields more efficiently. Then we used tractors.
Our goal was to eat, not to plough the fields.
Many objects are mass produced now while they were the craft of the artisans centuries ago. We still have craftsmen who enjoy doing things by hand and whose products command a big premium over mass market products.
I don't have an issue if most of the code will be written by AI tools, provided that code is efficient and does exactly what we need. We will still have to manage and verify those tools, and to do that we will still have to understand the whole stack from the very bottom - digital gates and circuits to the highest abstractions.
AI is just another tool in the toolbox. Some carpenters like to use very simple hand tools while other swear by the most modern ones like CNC.
I don't regard programming as merely the act of outputing code. Planning, architecting, having a high level overview, keeping the objective in focus also matters.
Even if we regard programming as just writing code, we have to ask ourselves why we do it.
We plant cereals to be able to eat. At first we used some primitive stone tools to dig the fields. Then we used bronze tools, then iron tools. Then we employed horses to plough the fields more efficiently. Then we used tractors.
Our goal was to eat, not to plough the fields.
Many objects are mass produced now while they were the craft of the artisans centuries ago. We still have craftsmen who enjoy doing things by hand and whose products command a big premium over mass market products.
I don't have an issue if most of the code will be written by AI tools, provided that code is efficient and does exactly what we need. We will still have to manage and verify those tools, and to do that we will still have to understand the whole stack from the very bottom - digital gates and circuits to the highest abstractions.
AI is just another tool in the toolbox. Some carpenters like to use very simple hand tools while other swear by the most modern ones like CNC.