Software development is the most automated career in the history of all time.
Assemblers, Linkers, Compilers, Copying, Macros, Makefiles, Code gen, Templates, CI & CD, Editors, Auto-complete, IDEs are all terms that describe types of automation in software development.
LLM-generated code is another form of automation, but it certainly isn't the first. Right now most of the problems are when it is inappropriately used. The same applies to other forms of automation too - but LLMs are really hyped up right now. Probably it will go through the normal hype cycle where there'll be a crash, and then a plateau where LLMs are used to drive productivity but expectations of their capability are more aligned to reality.
In french the two fields that are Computer Science and Information Technology are under the same moniker: "informatique", a portmanteau of information and automatic.
The whole field is about automating yourself out of a job, and it's right in the name.
> Il faut attendre 1962 pour réentendre parler d’informatique dans les médias. « Informatique » est en effet le terme utilisé pour la première fois par un scientifique français pour désigner le traitement automatique des données. Il s’agit de Philippe Dreyfus, fondateur de la société SIA, acronyme pour « Société d’Informatique Appliquée ».
And then enters the dictionary in 1966.
In 1957 in Germany, Karl Steinbuch describes Informatik as Automatische Informationsverarbeitung.
Assemblers, Linkers, Compilers, Copying, Macros, Makefiles, Code gen, Templates, CI & CD, Editors, Auto-complete, IDEs are all terms that describe types of automation in software development.
LLM-generated code is another form of automation, but it certainly isn't the first. Right now most of the problems are when it is inappropriately used. The same applies to other forms of automation too - but LLMs are really hyped up right now. Probably it will go through the normal hype cycle where there'll be a crash, and then a plateau where LLMs are used to drive productivity but expectations of their capability are more aligned to reality.