In the (now not very) long run, programming was a job meant for computers, anyway. The future will look back at "programming" the way we now look at Charles Dickens characters toiling in soot-filled factories. It's not what people are best at, and it looks like soon there will be better ways to accomplish this job.
I don’t know if I agree with this, but I think it depends what you mean when you say “programming”.
I use programming as one of the examples of intrinsically human work.
You have a (general computing) machine that can do anything(), it only has meaning and utility from humans thinking about problems they have and how to solve them.
The hard part of programming is analysing what problems you have, and what you want to do about them.
This is why one of the distinguishing features between junior and senior programmers is that seniors tend to think about the (human) problem they’re solving a lot more.
Tools like copilot help with the physical interfacing between programmer and machine, but they don’t eliminate programming.
But a recurring worry people are expressing in this thread is: some people think they _do_, and how insidious that idea is.
The tool is great, the managers deciding that time spent thinking about its output, or developing their staff’s skills, is a waste because “just use what the AI says”, are the danger.
As long as people and computers exist, there will be programming.
