Hi, this is a question that popped into my mind when i saw an article about some AWS engineer talking about ai assistants taking over the job of programmers, this reminded me that it’s not the first time that something like this was said.

My software engineering teacher once told me that a few years ago people believed graphical tools like enterprise architect would make it so that a single engineer could just draw a pretty UML diagram and generate 90% of the project without touching any code,
And further back COBOL was supposed to replace programmers by letting accountants write their own programs.

Now i’m curious, were there many other technologies that were supposedly going to replace programmers that you remember?

i hope someone that’s been around much more than me knows something more or has some funny stories to share

  • @[email protected]
    6•4 months ago

    The first time I heard about programming being obsolete was when I was taught UML in university. That was over almost 15 years ago and it didn’t happen, if anything programmers now also had to know UML, which isn’t all that bad but it definitely didn’t replace anything, it’s just useful for designing and documenting projects.

    I also heard from colleagues that in the 80s and 90s people said that SQL was supposed to be used by users directly, making (some) programming obsolete.

    Now AI bullshit claims to be making programming obsolete. I won’t hold my breath.

    • @esc27
      3•4 months ago

      Same here only it was 20 years ago. UML professor was convinced it would replace programming.