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question, When were programmers supposed to be obsolete? (poliverso.org)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi, this is a question that popped into my mind when i saw an article about some AWS engineer talking about ai assistants taking over the job of programmers, this reminded me that it's not the first time that something like this was said.

My software engineering teacher once told me that a few years ago people believed graphical tools like enterprise architect would make it so that a single engineer could just draw a pretty UML diagram and generate 90% of the project without touching any code,
And further back COBOL was supposed to replace programmers by letting accountants write their own programs.

Now i'm curious, were there many other technologies that were supposedly going to replace programmers that you remember?

i hope someone that's been around much more than me knows something more or has some funny stories to share

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Oracle has a product called Oracle Policy Automation (OPA) that it sells as "you can write the rules in plain English in MS Word documents, you don't need developers". I worked for an insurance organization where the business side bought OPA without consulting IT, hoping they wouldn't have to deal with developers. It totally failed because it doesn't matter that they get to write "plain English" in Word documents. They still lack the structured, formal thinking to deal with anything except the happiest of happy paths.

The important difference between a developer and a non-developer isn't the ability to understand the syntax of a programming language. It's the willingness and ability to formalize and crystallize requirements and think about all the edge cases. As an architect/programmer when I talk to the business side, they get bored and lose interest from all my questions about what they actually want.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

Edge cases are for teams that have internal testing AND care about quality.

A quick easy way to know if your new job is or isn't one of those, is when you open a 3 year project and find no unit tests.