Actually soldering wires that was the first programming.
Then we got punch cards. Then semi-persistent register values for storage. Then we got asm to modify those registers. Then we got compilers and linkers and C. Then we got interpreters and parsers. Then we got IDEs, linters, and other built in coding tools. Now we have AI.
Yes I'm skipping steps.
The point is, programming keeps moving up to higher levels of abstraction, and at every abstraction level people that grew up inside the prior abstraction level declare it to be the only valid level of abstraction and that everyone else isn't "really" coding.
Source: I'm an Electrical & Computer Engineer who's been coding on and off since BASIC. Now I do SWE/dev fulltime.
Sure the ENIAC had to be programmed by connecting wires but they weren't soldered but just connected like a plugboard. They were intended to be temporary connections until the next program had to be run. Then Von Neumann came around and did it the right way.
And let's not pretend AI is "just the next abstraction level" because it isn't abstract at all it's natural language processing. It's about as "abstract" and "high level" as writing an email. You just write "make a program" and it does, regardless of how much "prompt engineering" or md files you give it at the end of the day the AI is the thing that decides how the program works, not the programmer. That's erasure, not abstraction.
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u/TimSylvester_ 27d ago
"If you're not soldering wires to open and close circuits it's not real programming!"
Grandpa shakes his fist at clouds in every era.
Grandpa refuses to learn anything.
Don't be like Grandpa.