The velocity of development I've experienced over the last four months from using AI is absurd. The level of quality has shifted from having to carefully review each line of code the models produced to fully trusting the output and delegating whole complex tasks. I spend more time now thinking about the spec, the initial prompt, and the plan than on "programming." Software development as we knew it is done—we've seen its growth, almost like an infant's, and now we will watch it disappear: in the same way knitting is almost gone, the requirement to hit a keyboard to talk to a computer in a non-native language and create abstract things that serve other humans through a digital channel is ending on those terms. Junior software developers will not learn programming anymore and no one will hire them. I feel that over the next three to four years the gap will be enormous between technical people and the rest of the world in how to use this new technology—and then that gap will disappear, completely.
What remains is hardware and human-centered services: certifications and insurance wrapped around assets worldwide. Art, empathy, and human relationships will still matter.