Do you know that programmers will be in decline in a few years?

"Computer World" magazine once wrote an article saying that "programming will disappear by 1960" because IBM has developed a new language FORTRAN that allows engineers to write the mathematics they need The formula is then submitted to the computer for execution, so programming ends.

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After a few years, we heard a new saying: any business People can use business terms to describe their problems and tell the computer what to do. Using this programming language called COBOL, the company no longer needs programmers.

Later, it is said that IBM developed a new programming language called RPG, which allows employees to fill in forms and generate reports, so most of the company's programming needs can be met through it Complete

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In the 1980s and 1990s, with With the emergence of components and graphical development, business personnel can easily develop programs by dragging and dropping

In the 21st century, Low Code and No Code appeared again. Since there is no code anymore, there is no need for programmers.

What is the truth?

Programming has not been ended. On the contrary, the threshold has been continuously lowered, resulting in an increasing number of programmers.

Now the ultimate boss—— Big model - here it comes. It is different from previous new technologies and new languages. It does not require people to write code, but directly generates code.

Can it end programming and eliminate programmers?

First of all, we must admit that the industry's top AIGC tools, such as GPT-4, now have very powerful code generation capabilities. If you still have objections to this, please read the articles I wrote before, "AI can generate 95% of the code"

There are also people on the Internet who use GPT-4, Midjourney, DALL·E 3 generates a game similar to Angry Birds: "Angry Pumpkins", the effect is amazing!

However, the code generated by AIGC is not completely guaranteed to be flawless, nor its accuracy, so programmers need to check and debug, and guide them to make modifications after problems are discovered, This is quite a tedious job

Proficiency in tools such as GPT-4 can make programmers become super individuals

Many people do not Realize that writing code is only one part of software development. Before writing code, there is still demand analysis and design (including architectural design and detailed design) that need to be completed

AIGC has made significant progress in detailed design, but there is still much to be done in architectural design promote. You can read "AI is beginning to threaten programmers' core abilities!" 》Write an article to learn about specific cases

With the rapid iteration of AIGC, within 5 to 10 years, AI with strong design capabilities and code generation capabilities may appear, but AIGC will be difficult to overcome. The last big mountain: needs analysis.

Understanding your customers’ needs is a difficult task. You need to be familiar with their field, business and process, and through constant communication and confirmation, you can roughly figure out what they need

In many cases, customers will only suddenly realize it when they see the finished software : Oh, it turns out that the function I need is not like this

All programming-related AI tools on the market, such as GitHub Copilot and Amazon CodeWhisperer, cannot generate code directly from customer needs. , all require programmers to tell it exactly what to do in jargon.

To put it simply, there is no way to go from customer needs directly to code generation.

From detailed software specifications to code, it is very promising

So someone has set up a new outsourcing company that specializes in using AI to generate code, hoping to use it at a lower cost Conduct dimensionality reduction attacks on other companies.

Only people can communicate needs between people. If universal artificial intelligence cannot be realized, the task of demand analysis cannot be solved by AI

The time for the widespread application of artificial intelligence is difficult to determine

In "Heart of the Machine", Kurzweil showed a chart of the growth of computing power

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From the 20th century to the 21st century, computing power has increased exponentially. According to this trend, around 2025 , the computing power of a $1,000 personal computer can reach the level of the human brain.

By 2060, computing power will exceed that of all human brains combined.

However, just because the computing power reaches the level of the human brain, it does not mean that the intelligence can also reach the human level.

The number of neurons in the human brain is approximately 100 billion. Each neuron has an average of about 1,000 connections, for a total of 100 trillion connections.

All connections can perform synchronous calculations, which is a very powerful parallel processing capability.

Now people are trying to use neural networks to simulate the human brain, but when there are enough neurons, how does it work and why does it show "intelligent" behavior? Humans are still I'm so confused that I can only use one word - emergence - to describe it vaguely.

So Kurzweil suggested studying the human brain and using technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging scanners to peek inside the brain. As technology continues to be updated, scanning resolution and scanning speed continue to improve, and non-invasive and non-invasive scanning of living human brains has finally become feasible.

Based on the information obtained from the scan, map the specific locations, interconnections, components of the soma, axons, dendrites, presynaptic vesicles and other neural parts . Then the entire brain tissue can be recreated in a neural computer with a large enough memory, and the stored contents of the brain can also be recreated.

I don’t know when this day will come, so now there is no need to worry about the threat of AI. As long as you can control the AIGC tool and let it be used for your own use, you can continue to move with peace of mind. Brick.

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