What does programming mean in the age of AI?
What does programming even mean, and how will AI transform it?
What programming means
Programming means instructing computers to do something.
We have been using different programming languages for this purpose until now, and have climbed up the ladder from low level to high level:
- Binary
- Logic Gates
- Assembly
- Fortran/COBOL
- C
- Java/C#
- Python/Javascript
AI as a new programming language
AI will make English/(other languages) the new programming language.
So, new-era programmers will be the ones who can effectively instruct/prompt AI (and AI in turn would instruct computers to do something).
These tasks can include everything, from building software, creating music/graphics/videos, to writing, or any other tasks.
And the person instructing AI to perform all of these tasks will be the programmer of the new age.
Domain expertise still matters
This doesn't mean domain knowledge/expertise wouldn't matter.
Let's consider plumbing. I, as an inexperienced plumber, can do very simple/basic plumbing tasks without any experience. But doing something complex, such as diagnosis? I cannot, since I lack the domain knowledge/expertise about that.
The same goes for coding. A person without any coding experience will be able to do very simple/basic tasks, but doing something complex would require domain knowledge.