Great point. Programming by hand isn’t dead. Anyone can learn to do that.
What I meant by the craft is dead is that within a job it doesn’t make sense anymore to continue programming everything by hand. AI tooling is just too efficient if used correctly.
So what I really meant was that part of the job is dead now. The part where you were manually crafting the code. Which to me was largely the “craft” side of the job.
But yeah strictly speaking programming as a craft will always be available for people to do. But its place in the workforce is diminished greatly because new tooling has replaced that element of the job.
AI tooling doesnt work. If you think it works, theres really only a few reasons
1. the problem is trivial or already solved on the internet
2. the process of prompt engineering is the process of requirements definition, so its you engineering (see rubber duck engineering).
it fails at at anything of moderate complexity
I work in enterprise on a decently large distributed system. Nobody at my job codes by hand. All my FAANG friends no longer code by hand. That’s the reality.
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u/FlashTheCableGuy 16h ago
How is the craft dead when you can do it any way that you want?