From Wizards to Wordsmiths: the emotional impact of AI on software professionals
I don't know about you, but when an AI first wrote code for me, I was really upset. It struck hard at my sense of self, of the decades of effort I'd put into my craft. This video is about why software professionals may initially feel this way, and how a richer view of language can help us to see our roles in a more holistic manner.
Our self-perception as software professionals is key to how we will actually act in our roles. See ourselves only as "coders" is far too limited a conception. By understanding how language and thought work, and how powerful clear communication can be, we can reframe our self-perception to something more akin to a wordsmith - deploying language precisely and clearly - as an engineering disciplines.
In doing so, the AI machine will not simply roll over us!
That said, it's OK to grieve for the simple joy of the process of coding. Lots of us do.
Below are some links to articles that explore this topic further: - https://ainativedev.io/news/the-4-patterns-of-ai-native-dev-overview - https://annievella.com/posts/the-software-engineering-identity-crisis/ - https://ordep.dev/posts/writing-code-was-never-the-bottleneck