Is this the end of programming?

I like this CS50 Tech Talk with Dr. Matt WelsC that discussed the end of the programming languages and jobs as they are right now with the use of LLMs.

It is very illustrative of the changes that the LLMs will bring to us. For example, these thoughts about the use of Copilot (like tools) can change how we program:

"Copilot is incredible for a few reasons. I think one of the things that people don't fully appreciate is that it keeps you in the zone of writing code."

"So by keeping you in the zone, I think people are so much more productive with this, to the point where we mandated, every developer at our company has to use Copilot. If there's somebody not using Copilot, they're going to be fired."

This is very simplistic, but illustrative of the fact of automatization that comes:

"How much does it cost to replace one human developer with AI? Well, I did the math. ... And so it costs $1,200 a day to employ you as a SWE at one of these companies. ... So the final result of your output is something like 100 lines of code a day. ... So if you do the math, then the total cost for the output of one human software developer on GPT-3 is $0.12. This is a factor of 10,000."

And the near future will be the "Natural Language Computer" where we will use natural language to interact and program the computers as shown in the upper picture.

Summary:

• Dr. Welsh discusses the evolution of programming languages, critiquing their complexity and limited progress in making coding accessible.
• He emphasizes the emerging role of AI in coding, suggesting AI will eventually write code for us.
• The talk explores the limitations of current programming languages and the potential of AI, like GPT models, in automating code writing.
• Dr. Welsh uses historical programming examples to illustrate the complexity and challenges of coding.
• He discusses his company, Fixie, which aims to simplify the integration of AI in programming.
• Nobody understands how LLMs work: "Chain of thought" example
• The talk concludes with a vision of a future where programming is more about instructing AI in natural language, drastically changing the role of human programmers.

My personal opinion is that the current programmers, like many other roles in the companies, will not disappear but will be replaced with the new cyborg programmers augmented with AI tools that we need to adopt and learn how to effectively integrate into our routines.