Software engineers have joined the ranks of editors, translators, and other professionals who fear that they will be replaced by ChatGPT. However, it is software engineers who should not worry about this, writes WIRED.

The publication reminded us of the story of when the FORTRAN programming language appeared. It was supposed to allow people to write programs without the support of a programmer. The COBOL syntax was also supposed to be so simple that it could bypass developers.

Back then, programmers were also worried that their jobs would be replaced. But it turned out to be quite the opposite – both FORTRAN and COBOL did not replace software engineers. On the contrary, they added new complexity to the world of computer technology, which created even more demand for programmers.

With this in mind, the publication believes that the current claims that ChatGPT will replace all software engineers are almost certainly inappropriate. It is convinced that firing engineers and using artificial intelligence to perform blocked functions is likely to lead to disaster, followed by the rehiring of engineers in the shortest possible time.

Large language models (LLMs) can replace some of the tedious engineering work. They can suggest autocomplete or data sorting methods if prompted correctly. However, this is no substitute for consulting another engineer.

Earlier, Emad Mostak, CEO of Stability AI, expressed the opinion that Ali will soon make most outsourced programmers disappear in India.