Agreed, the programmer is not going away. However, I expect the role is going to change dramatically and the SDLC is going to have to adapt. The programmer used to be the non-deterministic function creating the deterministic code. Along with that were multiple levels of testing from unit to acceptance in order to come to some close alignment with what the end-user actually intended as their project goals. Now the programmer is using the probabilistic AI to generate definitive tests so that it can then non-deterministically create deterministic code to pass those tests. All to meet the indefinite project goals defined by the end-user. Or is there going to be another change in role where the project manager is the one using the AI to write the tests since they have a closer relationship to the customer and the programmer is the one responsible for wrangling the code to validate against those tests.

I predict the main democratization change is going to be how easy people can make plumbing that doesn't require--or at least not obviously require--such specificity or mental-modeling of the business domain.

For example, "Generate me some repeatable code to ask system X for data about Y, pull out value Z, and submit it to system W."

> The problem is that the average person doesn't know how what their actual problems are in sufficient detail to get a working solution. When you get down to breaking down that problem... you become a programmer.

Agreed. I've spent the last few years building an EMR at an actual agency and the idea that users know what they want and can articulate it to a degree that won't require ANY technical decisions is pure fantasy in my experience.