Steve Wright’s Post

Once upon a time people wrote by carving on wood and stone tablets. Then someone invented a way to make papyrus… suddenly writing became ACCESSIBLE TO MORE PEOPLE. This is what GenAI does to building software. It just makes it more accessible. As a developer myself the degree of wrangling we have to do to make these systems work today is STUPID. To make better software development solutions is great. What most developers who dislike the idea of GenAI for coding is upset about it that building software solutions will become more accessible and their hard caught skills will lose value. And many of them will lose value. But some will persist. There are still COBOL systems and developers out there. But people aren’t building new systems with those languages, in terms of innovation, they are dead. One day also Java will die. JavaScript will die. Python even will die. They will be replaced with simpler Langauges that GenAI or Natural language syntax that builds and layers well for added complexity. This is the innovation we need. It’s not stupid, it’s wrong, because code writing won’t die, it will drastically change and simplify into natural language.

McKinsey & Company four C’s

You make it very difficult to offer a contrarian perspective

What you miss here though my friend, is that once upon a time before the language of C++, Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python etc there was something called Machine Language. Now if you compare the complexity of Machine Language or other early languages like COBOL or 4Tran, the evolution of language has simplified programming VASTLY. In the COBOL and Machine Language eras it was UNHEARD of to be able to find a coding solution WITH ACTUAL CODE on a freakin forum. Why? Because the code was SOOOOO LONG AND VERBOSE to do a very simple thing. The world of OPEN SOUCE brought collective intelligence to the world of computer programming. Generative AI is that for pseudo code. The failure of imagination here is not seeing that new standards for software will be created which will have new languages and frameworks which will work BETTER with Generative AI than using older languages from scratch. Already there is a huge No Code movement, even before generative AI! GenAI will only put that on steroids. Code is changing, you should go to the Strange Loop conference and see what those old heads and new meta heads are thinking and creating. You know I have many critiques of this space but to be overly simplistic like this isn’t informing people.

The new language of code is NATURAL LANGUAGE. A new set of coding languages and frameworks will arise to enable LLMs to effectively build complete systems from scratch in minutes. Imagine the world of news media before word press, a no code open source platform came onto the scene. Disruption can be painful to see but we must not stick our heads in the sand. We are better to pick up shovels and dig deep into the heart of the matter. We might unearth the roots of the problem and be empowered to plant the seeds of innovative ourselves. The winds of change are a bitch! But we can cultivate resilience, adaptability, and growth and make a better future because it don’t stop til the casket drop ⚰️

Wish I had known you better at salesforce. We would have been good friends