Not the end of implementation, but a change in the way of observation
Recently, Elon Musk said that AI will generate machine code directly without programming languages,
and humans will no longer need to write code.
This is the claim that the friction of implementation will disappear.
An era where thoughts become execution.
“Imagination-to-Software.”
This direction itself is worth discussing.
Technology has always been abstracted.
High-level languages replaced assembly,
and frameworks were built on top of them.
ORM wrapped database access with objects.
Similar stories emerged back then.
“Now there’s no need to write SQL directly.”
But in reality, it was different.
SQL was created not to express “how to fetch,”
but to express “what you want.”
And as object-oriented development spread,
developers started exchanging data as objects.
However, when problems arose, they eventually went back to the database.
ORM generated queries,
but we had to read those queries again.
We checked SQL to see performance,
and directly queried to validate data.
Abstraction has emerged, but observation has not disappeared.
If AI generates machine code directly,
we enter a world of one more layer of abstraction.
But the following question remains:
“Why does this system work this way?”
Humans have devised ways to look inside
before trusting the results.
We created logs,
we created debuggers,
we created profilers.
Systems generated by AI will be no exception.
We will likely end up
creating a new layer of observation
to understand AI's output.
AI accelerates execution.
However, it also rapidly propagates ill-defined problems.
What matters at this point
is not who wrote the code,
but who made the decisions.
This is why I see this change
as akin to the regression of webmasters.
Execution is automated,
but the role of understanding the whole becomes even more important.
I don't think coding will disappear entirely.
However, I believe the center of gravity will shift.
From typing ability to structural thinking.
From implementation speed to problem definition ability.
From partial skills to understanding the entire system.
Technology will become more abstract.
However, humans have always devised ways to look beneath it.
I believe this time will be no different.
