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Quitting programming as a career right now because of LLMs would be like quitting carpentry as a career thanks to the invention of the table saw.

Trillions spent on LLMs to replace programers, not a single use shown that could replace anyone but a fresh grad though

I'm into augmentation, not replacement. They can definitely augment our expertise if we use them for the right kind of things.

But Software Engineers main job is not programming. It's solving problems, and the cognitive decline that usage of LLMs is being shown to do seems to be antithetical to that job.

I think the cognitive decline thing is overblown, personally If you let LLMs think for you then sure, you won't learn as much - but you can also chose to use LLMs in a way that actively challenges you to learn more and take on more ambitious projects

The reason I'm excited about LLMs is that they let me take on a much broader array of more ambitious software projects - I wrote about that two years ago and it's stayed true for me since then simonwillison.net/2023/Mar/27/...

It’s made me feel ambitious again. Like software is fun and the sky’s the limit.

A thing about being old, I guess no surprise, is that I do not have the stamina I did. Even twenty years ago, I could work sixteen hour days. Also memory. I have too many details in my head now. Both of those made me feel dispirited and less interested. Claude solves both of those. I'm so grateful.