How so?

BASIC was supposed to be astep toward using a natural human language, and a number of Microsoft products were too.

As I said before, we've been wanting to use a Natural Human Language for programming for a long time.

Edit: adding a wikipedia reference because apparently I am the only person on the planet that has been looking for a way to use a Natural Human Language for programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_programming

Second Edit: Adding the following paragraph from the wikipedia page for emphasis

Researchers have started to experiment with natural language programming environments that use plain language prompts and then use AI (specifically large language models) to turn natural language into formal code. For example Spatial Pixel created a natural language programming environment to turn natural language into P5.js code through OpenAI's API. In 2021 OpenAI developed a natural language programming environment for their programming large language model called Codex.

Maybe you have. I would like no such thing.

Oh, and.. who are you?

I think after all the goalpost moving, we have to ask - why the bitflip does it matter what we call it?

Some people are getting a lot of work done using LLMs. Some of us are using it on occasion to handle thing we don't understand deeply but can trivially verify. Some of us are using it out of laziness because it helps with boilerplate. Everyone who is using it outside of occasional tests is doing it because they find it useful to write code. If it's not coding, then I personally couldn't care less. Only a True Scotsman should case.

If my boss came to me and said "hey we're going to start vibe coding everything st work from now on. You can manually edit code but claude code needs to be your primary driver from now on" I would quit and find a new career. I enjoy coding. I like solving puzzles using the specifics of a language syntax. I write libraries and APIs and I put a great deal of effort into making sure the interface is usable by a human being.

If we get to the point where we are no longer coding, we are just describing things in product language to a computer and letting it do all the real work, then I will find a more fulfilling career because this ain't it

By the time it works flawlessly, it won't be your career anymore, it'll be the product manager's. They will describe what they want and the AI will produce it. You won't be told to "use Claude all the time".

I personally hate coding, but it's a means to an end, and I care about the end. I'm also paranoid about code I don't understand, so I only rarely use AI and even then it's either for things I understand 100% or things that don't matter. But it would be silly to claim they don't produce working code, no matter what we want to call it.

This is the core of the issue. You hate coding, and I love it. I chose to be a software engineer not because I like using software, but because I like writing software.

If we get to a point where the engineers are replaced by machines, I would hope that the project managers were replaced years before that, as a final act of revenge

This argument is fallacious.

I enjoy a lot of things (Software Engineering is one of them) that in NO way determines whether or not AI is coding, nor does it guarantee me a career (just ask all the blacksmiths that disappeared once cars became the mass transport vehicle).

The fact that people are going to (possibly) be able to instruct a computer to do whatever they wish without the need of a four year degree and several years of experience scares you, I get that, but that's not going to have any effect on reality.

Edit: Have a look at all the peoples careers that have ended because software took over.

And more importantly perhaps to u/shortrounddev2, if they enjoy coding so much, they'll still be able to do it as a hobby! It's just that there may not be anybody willing to pay for a slow lumbering human to work their way through the problem.

I don't like X, therefore X isn't true.