Revenue does exist .. showing demand/value. Also, valuation multiple of 25-70x ARR is in that "captn .. the engine is gonna blow up anything sir". Also, given their current design surface, rapid changes to the "core intelligence layer/substrate" & good usage workflow patterns that are still being discovered ... we are probably creating tech debt faster than value. Specs are great .. but we also discover the [stable/actual/valid] spec as we build (and often at the end of the build).
The value of data model in post is spot on. AI has the potential to offer a mapping from the old to ideal (materialising a view); potentially offering an evolutionary path out for the smarter orgs.
Great to start off ... then we will end-up reinventing/re-specifying functions for reusability, module/packages for higher-level grouping, types/classes, state machines, control-flows [with the nuances for edge cases and exit conditions], then we will need error control, exceptions; sooner or later concurrency, parallelism, data structures, recursion [lets throw in monads for the Haskellians amoung us]; who knows .. we may even end up with GOTOs peppered all over the English sentences [with global labels] & wake up to the scoping, parameter passing. We can have a whole lot of new fights if we need object-oriented programming; figure out new design patterns with special "Token Factory Factories".
We took a few decades to figure out how to specify & evolve current code to solve a certain class of problems [nothing is perfect .. but it seems to work at scale with trade-offs]. Shall watch this from a distance with pop-corn.
Human skill (and intuition/wisdom?) improves and is sustained by practice in the domain. The real unknown how things will pan out when automation reaches a point where we humans just do not bother putting in the hours because many of the trivial tasks or just lose touch. What happens if a driver relies on just the auto pilot system and gradually loses the skill to drive? Stuff does fail and complex systems will fail in unknown ways.
Oh the possibilities of this - may be with enough data
- you can just wander around a suburb and figure out which houses are currently occupied and which ones are not.
- improve aged care by monitoring walking patterns
- combine it with some more ingenious technology for localised sound -- you can beam music as I walk around the house (or block out sounds)?
- a bit more sensitivity and we can even probably pick up a person while they are having or just about to have a heart attack?
I am sure the privacy folk out there are having multiple heart palpitations.
People use words (terms/names) to communicate. I am not sure if most developers think deeply about all this -- nor do they care, or want to care. My observation is that developers just do and mimic what they find commonly used in their environment. Very much like we learn and use English. So, if you are a Java developer and you take the API as your template -- then that is the vocabulary that seeps out.
== Long version ==
Depends on: (i) the job, (ii) quality of CS degree, (iii) career ambition/plans, and (iv) companies/people/culture, (v) project, and (vi) your ability/motivation/persistence.
A lot of basic programming can be picked up over time if you are keen. For many people, structured education is helpful when learning more complex material -- concurrency, compiler construction, advanced data structures, optimisation.
Some companies insist on a CS/SE degree (esp. consulting). Some projects state that all engineers must have formal qualifications.
There are a lot of Dilbert bosses out there -- they do not know/care/will-ever-know about Github profiles. There are bosses that just want stuff done. If you ever have to work for them, a paper with shields on it helps.
There is support for this in skills like Martial arts, Music and many art forms. Repetition has been shown to create abstractions inside the brain that eventually help understand the more "deeper" problems better -- though there is no significant evidence. The fact that many learning forms (mostly eastern) have used it for such a long time suggests that we cannot completely dismiss it outright.
one of the better written articles out there for some one new to the language. Also like the fact that some of the funamentals of functional programming are also briefly introduced in context.