Will LLMs End Programming? Lessons from Machine Translation

The debate rages on: will large language models (LLMs) render programmers obsolete? This article uses machine translation as a compelling analogy. While tools like Google Translate have revolutionized translation, they haven't replaced human translators. Translation requires contextual understanding, ambiguity resolution, and cultural sensitivity—skills LLMs currently lack. Similarly, programming demands creativity and problem-solving abilities beyond the current capabilities of LLMs. The author suggests LLMs are best used as assistive tools to enhance programmer efficiency, not replace them entirely.