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I think it matters, because nowadays we don't look at assembly any more. I mean, I don't recall the last time I was tracking down a compiler bug but it's definitely been more than 15 years ago.

We do have to look at the LLMs' output, though, and, as you already pointed out, iterate to get the correct results. What this means is that the output must still be readable, must be analyzed by someone and I don't see it going away any time soon.

The problem is that the analysis is not cheap. Sometimes, with boilerplate, it is easy, but many times it is not and that's where we get only slight gains by using LLMs.

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I agree from a programmers perspective.

But from a broad market and product perspective, for most things you don't need to look at the code. If the product kinda does what it's supposed to.

For example, in my game projects I don't look at the CMakeLists anymore, or python scripts that move assets here and there, I can run my game and just see that it did what I expect it to do (renders assets etc).

Similar with frontend, I don't care that much what the code looks like anymore, mostly that the site looks and feels as I expect it, and the correct network calls are happening.

TLDR; I'm thinking there are levels to this, in some projects it matters, in others it doesn't, it's kinda two different things. Programming wasn't replaced, LLMs just brought a new paradigm of doing things on the side.

I'm just rambling at this point, my thoughts on this are not super clear, sorry for that :D

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