>COBOL was supposed to let managers write programs. VB let business users make apps. Squarespace killed the need for web developers. And now AI.
The first line made me laugh out loud because it made me think of an old boss who I enjoyed working with but could never really do coding. This boss was a rockstar at the business side of things and having worked with ABAP in my career, I couldn't ever imagine said person writing code in COBOL.
However the second line got me thinking. Yes VB let business users make apps(I made so many forms for fun). But it reminded me about how much stuff my boss got done in Excel. Was a total wizard.
You have a good point in that the stuff keeps expanding because while not all bosses will pick up the new stack many ambitious ones will. I'm sure it was the case during COBOL, during VB and is certainly the case when Excel hit the scene and I suspect that a lot of people will get stuff done with AI that devs used to do.
>But the job of understanding what to build in the first place, or debugging why the automated thing isn't doing what you expected - that's still there. Usually there's more of it.
Honestly this is the million dollar question that is actually being argued back and forth in all these threads. Given a set of requirements, can AI + a somewhat technically competent business person solve all the things a dev used to take care of? Its possible, im wondering that my boss who couldn't even tell the difference between React and Flask could in theory...possibly with an AI with a large enough context overcomes these mental model limitations. Would be an interesting experiment for companies to try out.
Many business people I've worked with are handy with SQL, but couldn't write e.g. go or python, which always surprised me. IMO SQL is way more inconsistent and has a mental model far more distant from real life than common imperative programming (which simply parallels e.g. a cookbook recipe).
I find SQL becomes a "stepping stone" to level up for people who live and breathe Excel (for obvious reasons).
Now was SQL considered some sort of tool to help business people do more of what coders could do? Not too sure about that. Maybe Access was that tool and it just didn't stick for various reasons.
I knew a guy like that, except his tool of choice was Access. He could code, but it wasn't his strong suit, and when he was out of his element he typically delegated those responsibilities to more technical programmers, including sometimes myself. But with Access he could model a business with tables, and wire it together with VBA business logic, as easily as you and I breathe.
The first line made me laugh out loud because it made me think of an old boss who I enjoyed working with but could never really do coding. This boss was a rockstar at the business side of things and having worked with ABAP in my career, I couldn't ever imagine said person writing code in COBOL.
However the second line got me thinking. Yes VB let business users make apps(I made so many forms for fun). But it reminded me about how much stuff my boss got done in Excel. Was a total wizard.
You have a good point in that the stuff keeps expanding because while not all bosses will pick up the new stack many ambitious ones will. I'm sure it was the case during COBOL, during VB and is certainly the case when Excel hit the scene and I suspect that a lot of people will get stuff done with AI that devs used to do.
>But the job of understanding what to build in the first place, or debugging why the automated thing isn't doing what you expected - that's still there. Usually there's more of it.
Honestly this is the million dollar question that is actually being argued back and forth in all these threads. Given a set of requirements, can AI + a somewhat technically competent business person solve all the things a dev used to take care of? Its possible, im wondering that my boss who couldn't even tell the difference between React and Flask could in theory...possibly with an AI with a large enough context overcomes these mental model limitations. Would be an interesting experiment for companies to try out.