It's true that the 'dream' has been here for ages, but I do think that automation might force us to rethink our job in the digital industry.
I recently published an extensive article about the current state of these 'code machines', if developers might lose their job to them and what our options are. If you're interested, you can read it here: https://medium.com/design-and-develop/code-machines-29b066b6...
Bottom line is that I don't think that developers should feel intimidated by machines right now, but not be surprised by their rise either.
Not your coding skills, but your business will define if you’re still needed. If you’re coding basic low-cost websites at a high pace, you might run out of business faster than you might expect. If you can do it by repetition, a machine certainly can do that too. If you’re building crucial online services with a lot of custom functionality, the machines will have a harder time to keep up. Don’t worry about the need for your skills, worry about the need for your current business.
I can imagine there are a lot of companies that don't sell Scrum right. For example: teams are still ordered to fulfill a fixed scope in a fixed amount of time. As a team you can't fight that. It's not the fault of the team.
But from your article I understand 'Low Quality Code' and 'technical debt' are always the fault of Organizers. I don't agree on that.
A team estimates (led by their scrum master) how long they will be working on a user story. It's their responsibility to take everything account that's needed. They know how much time has to be spent to get the code right.
The Product Owner just gets the estimates from the sprint planning and knows how far the team can get. The team said they could do a particular user story in 5 points right? If that's 5 points with crap code as a result... well, maybe it was a too optimistic estimate with no space for good code.
I recently published an extensive article about the current state of these 'code machines', if developers might lose their job to them and what our options are. If you're interested, you can read it here: https://medium.com/design-and-develop/code-machines-29b066b6...
Bottom line is that I don't think that developers should feel intimidated by machines right now, but not be surprised by their rise either. Not your coding skills, but your business will define if you’re still needed. If you’re coding basic low-cost websites at a high pace, you might run out of business faster than you might expect. If you can do it by repetition, a machine certainly can do that too. If you’re building crucial online services with a lot of custom functionality, the machines will have a harder time to keep up. Don’t worry about the need for your skills, worry about the need for your current business.