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Why Programming Remains Fundamentally Difficult Despite AI Advances

By

jeromechoo

25d ago· 9 min readenOpinion

Summary

The article is a critical, opinionated essay about the state of software programming. It pushes back against the common question of whether AI will replace programmers, arguing that programming remains fundamentally difficult, messy, and human-centric. The author contends that AI tools like Copilot and ChatGPT are useful assistants but cannot replace the deep understanding, debugging, and architectural thinking required in software development. The piece explores the gap between the idealized vision of programming and the gritty reality of dealing with legacy code, unclear requirements, and system complexity.

Key quotes

· 3 pulled
I glance around and see a few faces turning around toward us, rolling their eyes ever so slightly before returning to their previous conversation. Yes, this question again.
They have a nephew who builds Shopify stores, they don't understand half the words he uses but he's in real trouble and says everybody is.
Programming still sucks. Not because we're bad at it, but because the problems we're solving are genuinely hard.
Snippet from the RSS feed
Sorry Peter. — I'm at a birthday party, and while most people here also work in tech, there's always a Guy with a Real Job. You know, a physical job, building some or other thing people need. And this Guy always asks some variant of the same question: are

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