The history of computer programming is a long journey in abstraction. 50 years ago, writing a program was punching holes in a stack of cards, handing them to an operator, and heading home while the computer ran all night. If there was a bug, you'd make the changes and go through the whole thing again. Then came assembly, then high-level languages like COBOL, then visual programming, and on and on until you see a kid in a Brooklyn coffee shop shouting into his phone at someone named Claude.
As time went on and these new advancements appeared, inevitably there would be a moment where someone would proclaim that developers were finally being automated away. No more heavy sighs from the bullpen of keyboard jockeys. The nerds have lost… huzzah! Except they hadn’t and they continued to build.
We now find ourselves in another one of those moments. In December of 2024, Mark Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan and said that AI at Meta was already reaching the capabilities of mid-level software engineers. By 2025, he said, most of the code in Meta's apps would be written by AI instead of people.
A tech leader making bold claims is one thing, but the wave of people gleefully "dunking" on the developer during the rise of AI has been… enlightening. Developers were not only justifiably worried about layoffs, they were disturbed by the manic enthusiasm for them.
