A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft
programmingfuture-of-workllm-codinggpt-4software-engineering
Abstraction: Programmer's first-person reflection on GPT-4 displacing coding craft
Key points:
- Author James Somers (New Yorker) watches a non-programmer friend use GPT-4 to build an iPhone app and a Snake game in hours — tasks the author couldn't easily do himself
- Somers compares the shift to Lee Sedol retiring from Go after losing to AlphaGo in 2016: "I want to apologize for being so powerless"
- GPT-4 acts as a senior engineer: it suggests architectural approaches, not just fiddly syntax — Ben plus GPT-4 is described as a "dangerous centaur"
- Edsger Dijkstra's 1978 argument that natural language programming rejects necessary precision is invoked, then partially refuted by prompting experience
- Author concludes softer skills — knowing what to build, communicating humanely — may "shine" as pure coding skill diminishes; calls this "the revenge of the so-so programmer"
Connections: Openai · GPT-4 · Agentic Coding · Future Of Work · Prompt Engineering
Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/20/a-coder-considers-the-waning-days-of-the-craft