This assumes that prompts do not evolve to the point where grandma can mutter some words to AI that produces an app that solves a problem. Prompts are an art form and a friction point to great results. Was only some months before reasoning models that CoT prompts where state of the art. Reasoning models take that friction away.
Thinking it out even further, programming languages will likely go away altogether as ultimately they're just human interfaces to machine language.
> programming languages will likely go away altogether
As we know them, certainly.
I haven't seen discussions about this (links welcome!), but I find it fascinating.
What would a PL look like, if it was not designed to be written by humans, but instead be some kind of intermediate format generated by an AI for humans to review?
It would need to be a kind of formal specification. There would be multiple levels of abstraction -- stakeholders and product management would have a high level lens, then you'd need technologists to verify the correctness of details. Parts could still be abstracted away like we do with libraries today.
It would be way too verbose as a development language, but clear and accessible enough that all of our arcane syntax knowledge would be obsolete.
This intermediate spec would be a living document, interactive and sensitive to modifications and aware of how they'd impact other parts of the spec.
When the modifications are settled, the spec would be reingested and the AI would produce "code", or more likely be compiled directly to executable blobs.
...
In the end, I still think this ends up with really smart "developers" who don't need to know a lick of code to produce a full product. PLs will be seen as the cute anachronisms of an immature industry. Future generations will laugh at the idea that anybody ever cared about tabs-v-spaces (fair enough!).
Take for example neuralink. If you consider that interface 10 years, or further 1000 years out in the future, it's likely we will have a direct, thought-based human computer interface. Which is interesting when thinking of this for sending information to the computer, but even more so (if equally alarming) for information flowing from computer to human. Whereas today, we read text on web pages, or listen to audio books, in that future, we may instead receive felt experiences / knowledge / wisdom.
Have you had a chance to read 'Metaman: The Merging of Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism' from 1993?
Thinking it out even further, programming languages will likely go away altogether as ultimately they're just human interfaces to machine language.