No Code Is Dead

Emoji eating paper

No code: the idea that programming was no longer needed, or at least soon the software engineering industry would not need to write code any longer. We would just configure UIs to do what we need the software to do, hooking pieces to other pieces in order to build applications.

This was a philosophically immature concept from the start. For the entire history of computers software engineers have been building better interfaces for less technical users to interact with. This does not mean that writing code is not needed. The whole point of writing code is to give a means of interacting with that code which does not require an understanding of the code itself. A function is essentially this: one statement that encapsulates a host of other statements.

No code is like saying, "wow, smiley face emojis are great, maybe in the future I won't need to write words!" Humans have been using symbols for thousands of years (before words) to encapsulate a shared meaning that is easily communicable. However, road signs does not replace Shakespeare. Similarly, configurable interfaces does not replace a Turing complete programming language.

No code is dead.

... except the AI's might just write it all

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