Here's the problem-- this will automate the type of "programming" that's just looking something up on stackoverflow and more or less copy/pasting the answer. There's a lot of that out there.
Once you're a more senior engineer there's a lot more than just writing code. Designing a system, worrying about maintainability, operational burden, scaling, etc. are where you might spend your time more.
I'd argue that even for "programming" the usefulness is debatable. These models spit out relatively correct code but mainly in the sense that they regurgitate something akin to a SO answer. There are plenty of subtle logical errors though and that debugging exercise often takes longer than just writing the code. Lots of code references other libraries, etc. and APIs do change frequently. So ensuring what's generated even works as expected is a fair amount of effort.
Still, the chasm between "engineering" work and "programming" work is only going to get bigger as a result of tooling like this. I expect a lot of what's currently outsourced to overseas IT consultancies can be replaced with half the staff leveraging these tools. The bottleneck has always been producing the exact requirements, tightly scoped tasks, etc. though. We're no closer here.
Once you're a more senior engineer there's a lot more than just writing code. Designing a system, worrying about maintainability, operational burden, scaling, etc. are where you might spend your time more.
I'd argue that even for "programming" the usefulness is debatable. These models spit out relatively correct code but mainly in the sense that they regurgitate something akin to a SO answer. There are plenty of subtle logical errors though and that debugging exercise often takes longer than just writing the code. Lots of code references other libraries, etc. and APIs do change frequently. So ensuring what's generated even works as expected is a fair amount of effort.
Still, the chasm between "engineering" work and "programming" work is only going to get bigger as a result of tooling like this. I expect a lot of what's currently outsourced to overseas IT consultancies can be replaced with half the staff leveraging these tools. The bottleneck has always been producing the exact requirements, tightly scoped tasks, etc. though. We're no closer here.