I think the analogy is directionally good, but it short changes the abstract and recursive nature of software.
We were already writing code that was automating not only manual work but also simpler programs. LLMs essentially just move us one more (large) hop up the abstraction ladder. And yes I get that it’s a different type of hop (non-deterministic, extremely leaky, etc), but it’s still a hop.
So if the only thing you want to do is manually write code in the traditional way (perhaps with vim instead of IntelliJ) then yeah I think you’re cooked. On the other hand, if you are willing to work with LLM-assisted tooling and learn how to compensate for its shortcomings then I think you’ll have a bright future.
We were already writing code that was automating not only manual work but also simpler programs. LLMs essentially just move us one more (large) hop up the abstraction ladder. And yes I get that it’s a different type of hop (non-deterministic, extremely leaky, etc), but it’s still a hop.
So if the only thing you want to do is manually write code in the traditional way (perhaps with vim instead of IntelliJ) then yeah I think you’re cooked. On the other hand, if you are willing to work with LLM-assisted tooling and learn how to compensate for its shortcomings then I think you’ll have a bright future.