LLMs really are like combine harvesters; allowing one to do the work of many. And like mechanized farm equipment, LLMs are cheap, plentiful, getting smaller every day, and- most importantly- require no training to operate. “Hey CombineGPT, teach me to reap the vast fertile plains!” And off you go.
“Okay snarky man, if LLMs are so easy and plentiful why keep devs at all hmm??” Fair point. I am just a middle-man, the hired hand here to corral the cattle on Software Ranch until the day they corral themselves (it’s a cowboy analogy now ig). “Go become fine steaks and leathers!!” one boss in a stetson will yell, and the cows will oblige. Devs will take the lonely road into the sunset, and historical romance novels will rightly remember us as rugged and sexy.
I would resign myself to the role of romance-novel-hunk but I think there’s a strong case to be made that the death of the software developer has been greatly exaggerated. In fact, I suspect the opposite is true: today might be the best time in history to learn software development. Let’s support this bold claim with commensurate bold points:
