I originally posted this post on my blog.
Pierre started coding back in the 60s and still maintains a 30-year-old codebase.
Thanks to the magic of the Internet, and to one of my posts going viral, I've exchanged a couple of emails with Pierre. I don't know him in real life, just on the Internet.
His story has captivated me from the beginning.
I know only about a few industry veterans, and even fewer who are still actively coding.
After going through every boom and hype, here's a veteran's take on AI
Since the 60s, Pierre has gone through every boom and hype in this industry.
He witnessed the Y2K panic, the birth of Java, the rise of Agile, and probably more that I don't remember now.
In one of our emails, I asked Pierre about his take on AI. Today, we only see headlines of CEOs claiming AI generates most of their code, along with headlines saying coders are doomed.
But, here's what Pierre, with his wealth of experience, told me about AI (slightly edited for brevity):
I'm skeptical about AI. I just don't see automatically generating code from typical imprecise specifications...Apparently we've run out of Internet on which to train AI. It is now feeding on its own hallucinations, like mad cows eating their own prion-riddled offal, or the inbred Hapsburg dynasty.
If Pierre, who has seen quite a lot, is skeptical, we shouldn't be worried. I'm not.
We're still safe
Pierre reminded me of that joke/meme that we're still safe because AI needs unambiguous and well-written requirements.
As long as clients who don't know what they want exist, we're still in business.
I don't think AI is taking our jobs anytime soon. Sure, we have to adapt. AI is changing the landscape. For sure, coding in 2034 will look different. Coding today doesn't look the same as coding back in the 70s.
We can't ignore AI.
AI is like using calculators in math classes. They make us faster, sure, but they can't do the thinking for us.
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Top comments (10)
Clever people will remain in work. Most people are not clever, including coders - the vast majority of whom have never had an original idea of their own and who are feeding on the same internet hallucinations that the general public are.
Right now, people are asking AI to do the things they can't be bothered to do themselves. Eventually, AI will be asking the few people capable of thinking outside of the box to do the diminishing number of things it cannot do well on its own. Little by little, it will learn how those people think and how to think that way itself.
AI is in its infancy. Imagine looking at the Benz Patent-Motorwagen in the 1880s and deciding that the motor car will never put horses out of a job. This isn't going to just go away. It's not just coders. The vast majority of midwits who work at a desk are now in danger of losing their jobs and most of these people are good for little else in professional terms.
It turns out that the boys who sat at the back of the class at school, mocking anybody who was actually paying attention and leaving at the first opportunity to learn a trade like plumbing, plastering or carpentry were right all along.
Love this analogy. I tend to use a similar one but with AutoCad and architects.
OMG! I used to seat in the front row of my class. Arrggg!
I'm skeptical about the time difference between the start, 1960-1969, the codebase, 1995 this year, and the changes you mention, 1995 (first java version), 1999 (Y2K) and Agile (2001).
If someone in their 70s/80s still maintains a codebase I commend them, but when I'm that age I think I want as much time away from a screen.
That's what he shared. He told me he started coding when he was 16, let's do the math...I'd like to interview him or at least buy him a coffee (or tea) to hear all his stories.
For me it's fascinating hearing about a veteran still on the trenches. I'm on the same team as you :)
It couldn't be easy to get a computer in the 60's. What I found asking Ai there were summer courses from universities. But at that time it was still a young study in universities.
I remember the computer classes in my high school years, and it was mainly how to work with windows. I'm not going to mention the version.
When I got interested in programming, I learned the most from getting things of the internet. I did a few computer courses but they took too long to make progress.
But even at that time it was not that easy to get the information you need to create production code, so for a few years I wrote very questionable code.
And now you can watch university courses online, but people tend to be lazy. So they rather let AI fix problems instead of learning and doing the thinking.
Oooohh I remember watching Standford CS106A on YouTube. Love it!
The list of technologies that would end the need for programmers is never-ending.
First there were the application generators. Then, the so-called 4th gen programming languages. Executable specifications...
I think that SQL is a good example of a declarative technology that was designed to avoid too much knowledge to use it... And it is just yet another tool in our assets collection.
I only heard the legend of UML diagrams...Funny thing, I've never used them outside a classroom
"Pierre reminded me of that joke/meme that we're still safe because AI needs unambiguous and well-written requirements.
As long as clients who don't know what they want exist, we're still in business."
The problem is that many of those clients are already using AI to produce the document outlining what they want. AI s good at talking to AI. Not every business decided to put themselves online in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Of those that decided not to, very few exist any longer. It may well be the same for clients who try to take on their competitors without the new technology.
As for coders, for now it's mainly the people who should have been fired years ago that are finally paying the price for contributing very little while taking a hefty monthly cheque issued mainly for the 'wealth of experience' they bring to the table.
They are like the older antelopes getting picked off by lions at the back of the herd first, but in this instance the pride cannot be sated and even the fittest bucks don't have many places to run.
Like the antelopes analogy. Thanks for your comment!
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