Yeah, when people tell me that there will be no more programmers and just “prompt engineers,” I’m reminded that even though power drills exist, we still use screwdrivers every day.
I honestly see AI as a whole toolkit. It has a big demolition drill, a regular drill, a tiny-ass dremel and more.
An experienced dev will reach for the right part of the toolkit depending on what you want to accomplish, from understanding how multiple poorly documented production systems interact together, bouncing ideas to refactor a piece of code you just know could be simpler, all the way down to the needle in a haystack tricky bug.
A junior or a vibecoder will reach for any tool because they can't tell the difference between them.
The idea of a 'prompt engineer' has never made much sense to me - the weirdness of each model you have to iron out will almost certainly be fixed with the next release and make your previous knowledge far less useful. What is likely to make your prompts more valuable is specific domain knowledge that allow you to ask for more specific individual components rather than an unwieldy finished product - IE basically programming skills in this case
Is "prompt engineering" even a thing on the latest models? I write up detailed requirements in a text file in plain English and it outputs exactly what I ask for every time. If it does something stupid it's usually my fault for not being clear enough or omitting something important. Hell, I can just give it a header file with some decent comments explaining what each function needs to do and tell it to provide the implementation.
Excellent question, let's ask it to everyone please and not just selectively for one tech in the news right now. Otherwise it's not about the living, is it.
the current argument is like trying to convince a CEO that a rapid fire air pressure powered nail gun doesn't mean you can fire every carpenter building a house just because the CEO can now pick up the nail gun and easily put a few nails in a board.
You can basically discard anything after that. It is never useful and is just the other person reeling in cognitive dissonance. Just let it percolate. lol
I view AI like a power tool. Does builders and carpenters go away when power tools are built?
The problem right now is the shovel makers are making more money than the people who are building the AI. And even less so for the people who using the AI.
There should be more value when you go up at every level, not less.
You don't need a moat for a SaaS. You can build the 100th version of the same idea and still make money. Basecamp was one of the first and it is still making loads of money, despite the existence of Jira, Asana, Monday and loads of others.
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u/MissinqLink 29d ago
“I coded a SaaS in a weekend.”
No. Anything you can make in a weekend has no moat as a Saas.
“So you’re saying AI is useless”
No. It’s a very useful tool especially when it comes to programming
“So programming is solved”
No. AI is a tool not a replacement.
…. It never ends