No, LLMs Won't End Programming—It's a Craft, Not a Casualty
It's Not the End of Programming
In a fediverse post, Jencel Panic pushes back against the claim that LLM coding agents signal the end of programming. He argues that programming is a craft that predates the IT industry and will endure, comparing its evolution to how the printing press didn't end hand drawing. Panic also reflects on hacker culture, noting that computers are just machines without the human spirit that makes them interesting.
It's not the end of programming, in the same way as the invention of the printing press wasn't 'the end of drawing by hand'.
- fnoef
People keep giving examples like printed press, or whatever, but honestly the printed press did kill writing/drawing by hand. When was the last time you bought a hand written book or a hand painted picture?
Sure, they still exist, but they are priced and marketed towards a specific class of people, and not the mass. And with software it’s even harder as software was never targeted at the mass. Software was always a by product of a car, a tv, or your fridge. No ordinary folk ever said “I’m going to go a buy WinZip now”. They simply had a variant of WinZip available with whatever computer they bought. There is simply no category of people who are willing to pay for “high quality hand crafted software”, except for perhaps a few ideologically motivated people.
Software development “lost” because it was seen as “something that comes for free with a computer”, and not something that people have to actively buy, like they buy TVs, fridges, or paintings.
- mapontosevenths
Every other time that programming has gotten easier we got more (often worse) code, though some folks who made their livings exploiting the inefficiencies had to adapt. This will be the same.
This isn't the end of programming, it's the beginning of your broccoli haired nephews ability to program. It's also opening a whole new world of opportunity to those with real skill.
A world filled with mountains of terrible code is a world that will reward the very programers who are trying to fight that future today.
- sdevonoes
If someone comes with a pretty decent idea and execution, it doesn’t really matter if code was written by human or llm, does it? Like if the next torvalds ships something great in the open, who cares how was it written.
- NichoPaolucci
I think that coding by hand is largely not going to occur anymore. What that does to the learning of new developers + the stagnation of old developers? I do not know.
I believe that what makes a good developer (a great developer, really) is the ability to do something at the smallest level "perfectly" or close to it. Chaining those tiny building blocks together. Understanding the entire flow of data + logically. Making something as fast as it can be. When you put more and more of those tiny blocks together, things get a little more imperfect - but a fantastic developer can keep them all perfect for a long time.
We're jumping way above that level. That small, perfect logic process, that visibility is now completely hidden from us, some of us wouldn't even know how to do it anymore. And juniors of today will never learn to.
And maybe they don't need to. Perhaps we will just build "bigger" software so that the level of imperfection becomes less noticeable. Larger systems, more functionality, more security.
I think the brain atrophy is going to hit us HARD though. It feels too fast to rip away the one thing that taught us all of this. Building something piece by piece was the way most of us learned. Then you can jump into bigger and bigger projects and your brain creates those pathways. Previous generations had months / years to learn new tooling - and now we threw ALL of the tooling away and said "use this instead". I think good developers will always find a way to learn and gro […]
- trashb
I suppose the author is pointing at the fact that coding != programming. The term "programming" is wider applicable than just in relation with computers.
Though I don't quite agree with the analogy. To me it seems more like the difference between writing with pen & paper or typing, digital vs analog drawing or printing press vs photo copier. There are some significant changes in how to use the tool properly (can't backspace/undo on physical). However the essence of writing a good story is not in the typing/penning it transcends that. At the same time it is true that different individuals may produce better output with one or the other due to personal preferences or adapting a different creative process.