Yes, and I think we'll course correct, eventually.
There's a reason we still (generally) teach people how to do arithmetic with pencil and paper instead of jumping straight to calculators. Learning basic algorithms for performing the computations helps solidify the concepts and the rules of the game.
We'll need to do the same thing eventually with respect to LLMs and software engineering. People who skip the foundations or let their comprehension atrophy will eventually end up in a spot in which they need those skills. I basically never do arithmetic using pen and paper now, but I could if I had to, and, more importantly, the process ingrained some basic comprehension of how the integers relate under the group operations.
I totally agree, re: SQL specifically, by the way. SQL is basically already natural language. It's probably the last thing that I'd need to offload to some natural language prompt. I think it's a bit of a vicious circle problem. There's a lot of people who only need to engage with SQL from time to time, so working with it is a bit awkward each time for lack of practice. This incentivizes them to offload it to the LLM just to get it out of the way, which in turn further atrophies their skills with SQL.
This was actually the whole point of SQL in the first place: to be a query language close enough to natural language that non-specialists could easily learn to use it.
This was also the point of COBOL. I think one thing we've learned is non-specialists don't like thinking/problem solving, and there's no meeting them halfway on that. Asking some people to think is asking too much.
I think that's a little too cynical of a view: in years past, I did in fact teach non-specialists to use SQL (against a read-only replica, I'm not crazy) so I didn't have to run all their ad hoc queries for them, and many of them took well to it once they overcame their initial hesitance. The framing that made it click for them was "it's like Excel, but with words."
There's a reason we still (generally) teach people how to do arithmetic with pencil and paper instead of jumping straight to calculators. Learning basic algorithms for performing the computations helps solidify the concepts and the rules of the game.
We'll need to do the same thing eventually with respect to LLMs and software engineering. People who skip the foundations or let their comprehension atrophy will eventually end up in a spot in which they need those skills. I basically never do arithmetic using pen and paper now, but I could if I had to, and, more importantly, the process ingrained some basic comprehension of how the integers relate under the group operations.
I totally agree, re: SQL specifically, by the way. SQL is basically already natural language. It's probably the last thing that I'd need to offload to some natural language prompt. I think it's a bit of a vicious circle problem. There's a lot of people who only need to engage with SQL from time to time, so working with it is a bit awkward each time for lack of practice. This incentivizes them to offload it to the LLM just to get it out of the way, which in turn further atrophies their skills with SQL.