Like a Calculator for Coding

People still do math in their heads and on paper.

But the calculator (and by extension, the phone/computer) has taken over the great majority of the heavy lifting arithmetic in daily human life. Even quick and dirty math. Watch clerks try to make change. Watch customers try to calculate a tip. Watch players sum up their scores at the end of the board game or the hand of cards.

AI is doing the same thing for software development.

Much like a professional accountant works with spreadsheets and ledger applications rather than a ledger book and pencil, professional programmers now work with AI rather than a text editor and make files.

Oh sure, we still look at the code. We may even tweak it here and there.

But AI is writing it, like the calculator is doing our math.

So does that mean we’ll lose the knowledge of programming? Is it something we need to collectively worry about?

I’m not sure yet. The calculator hasn’t destroyed humanity’s ability to do math, but it’s certainly a crutch.

Are crutches bad?