Hi, this is a question that popped into my mind when i saw an article about some AWS engineer talking about ai assistants taking over the job of programmers, this reminded me that it’s not the first time that something like this was said.

My software engineering teacher once told me that a few years ago people believed graphical tools like enterprise architect would make it so that a single engineer could just draw a pretty UML diagram and generate 90% of the project without touching any code,
And further back COBOL was supposed to replace programmers by letting accountants write their own programs.

Now i’m curious, were there many other technologies that were supposedly going to replace programmers that you remember?

i hope someone that’s been around much more than me knows something more or has some funny stories to share

👍Maximum Derek👍
link
fedilink
English
53M

The earliest I can think of (from personal experience) is 4GL languages; the early low-code platforms that first started to get traction in the early 80s. They wouldn’t have replaced programmers but some thought/hoped they would usher in an age of “low skill” programmers that companies could get away with paying minimum wage to.

Ephera
link
fedilink
23M

Oh yeah, low-code platforms in general are pretty much always a thing, in every industry for various tasks.

I’ve also never seen any of them that were not horribly abused with ridiculous workarounds or custom code snippets, which effectively made them as complex as a real program.

Create a post

Post funny things about programming here! (Or just rant about your favourite programming language.)

Rules:

  • Posts must be relevant to programming, programmers, or computer science.
  • No NSFW content.
  • Jokes must be in good taste. No hate speech, bigotry, etc.
  • 1 user online
  • 158 users / day
  • 317 users / week
  • 704 users / month
  • 2.84K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 1.57K Posts
  • 34.8K Comments
  • Modlog