When you look at the way that people talk about programming with AI, it’s easy to get into one of two mindsets: either you become a new generation Luddite, or you get depressed because programming is going to die.

When the bubble bursts

The denialist viewpoint is defined by the phrase “AI is a bubble and will pop”. This is completely correct, as we know, when the dotcom bubble popped, the internet ceased to exist, and we went back to the old ways. I’m being sarcastic of course, that was not the case.

In fact, it was the opposite, the internet came to dominate every aspect of our lives and then some. The bubble bursting just allowed for new incumbents like Google, or well established companies that managed to adapt, like Amazon. It will be the same for this bubble, when it inevitably does pop.

It will not mean that AI is going to go away, quite the opposite.

Permanently poor

The other viewpoint also has a catchphrase, namely “you have X months/days/hours to escape the permanent underclass”. It’s much more insidious, and much darker. You’ll never be able to write code professionally again.

Again, the truth is somewhere in the middle. You will not write code again, that’s true. What is false is that programming is not going anywhere. You will still write code, just not on your editor. Your value as a human being is not anymore your ability of writing runes on a dark screen with lots of colors.

Instead, you will be judged by your ability to communicate, both with humans and machines. The machines will write the code for you, but they will never be able to consider the trade-offs in the way that you do, and they will never be able to read your mind. Machines can, and will always exist to serve the human mind.

Do not let they control you instead.