My impression is that AI has done more for the accessibility of coding than the efficiency of coding.
Sure, it's much more possible for bob from accounting to throw together some trivial python script than it was a few years ago, but it seems the main benefit more skilled programmers get from it seems to be helping with syntax and pumping out boilerplate. Which is quite a bit of programming work but well less than 70% of it.
When a problem is tricky, it seems people turn off the autopilot.
Bob from accounting will not even know how to run a Python script, how to deploy it, install required modules. Programming is in a significant part about knowing how to break a solution to a problem into small, testable, reusable chunks of code and knowing when a one-file script is fine or when a framework (3rd-party or written in house) may be a better solution. Programming is also about knowing the tooling for your language, the operating system, protocols, formats. AI won't help Bob with that.
Sure, it's much more possible for bob from accounting to throw together some trivial python script than it was a few years ago, but it seems the main benefit more skilled programmers get from it seems to be helping with syntax and pumping out boilerplate. Which is quite a bit of programming work but well less than 70% of it.
When a problem is tricky, it seems people turn off the autopilot.
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