This deserves a much bigger write-up. But, with ChatGPT taking up so much mind share lately, I have an observation.
During my career, I’ve seen several technologies or approaches that would allow non-programmers to write systems, and replace those expensive programmers.
The claims that I can think of right off
- Fourth generation languages
- “Writing programs in plain English”
- <acronym title=”Computer Aided Software Enginieering”>CASE</acronym> tools
- Expert Systems
- Visual/Block programming
Even Visual Basic was touted as a way for anyone to program. (There are definitely others that I don’t remember.) Most of these have either become niche, a very focused tool, or have fallen by the wayside.
This is the main reason I remain skeptical of ChatGPT (or Co-pilot, or insert LLM tool here) for now. I expect they will eventually turn into some kind of specialized tool that are used in certain circumstances, but will not radically change the way software is developed.