Fluent in English, Able to Build

For a long time we've looked at coding as a black box activity done by people who either had to be super smart or had to be super smart and study Computer Science. Even the name says so: it's a science, so it must be difficult. And for the most part, that was right. Software engineering is difficult and everyone respects it. That's why engineers are rarely questioned on their work. Design? Everyone is an expert and they all have an opinion about where you should put that button. But when an engineer says "This will take 3 weeks", the only question tends to be "When can we start?"

But if the past year has taught us anything, it's that the doors are opening. Not because we all suddenly understand coding, but because the bar for entry is now the English language. If you can read this, you can build. It goes without saying that even with these tools, I'm not able to build as well as a software engineer. But that misses the point. The goal is not to build as well as the engineering elite. The goal is to build.

I'll tell you a story about my neighbour. Let's call him Pedro: 64, retired, drives a 2019 Volkswagen Tiguan. When he gets close to his car, it just unlocks. He gets in, puts his seatbelt on, and turns the key. The engine roars (well, as much as a VW engine can 'roar'). He puts it in gear, checks his mirrors, indicates, and off he goes.

But I'll let you in on a secret about Pedro. Every time he does this, he does it without understanding the underlying mechanics of what he's doing. He's got no clue what Bluetooth is and why the car just seems to unlock at the right time. He has no understanding of what the clutch does, and definitely wouldn't be able to draw you a flowchart of how power transfers from the pedal to the wheels. And yet, Pedro and billions of other people drive these machines they don't understand daily, bring them safely back home (for the most part), and even make money using them.

Building software might soon be the same. Most people will be able to 'code' in English without needing to understand the underlying mechanics, how the models are trained, or what they're doing inside of that black box. Soon enough that won't matter.

Software engineers will still need to understand these harnesses, build them, or step in when something goes wrong. That's why Anthropic engineers make about $1m/year and you and I don't. It's not too dissimilar to how car mechanics understand the intricacies of internal combustion, can repair technical faults, and can give advice on what model is most reliable.

The frontier labs keep telling us that coding is largely solved. Maybe they know something we don't. The stuff that I've been able to build and ship over the past year without having a deep understanding of code, and the ease with which I've done it, are hard to grasp. Let's not even get into how early we are in this era of change. Being able to build software is fun, just like driving a sports car is. My bet is that soon enough these two activities will be more similar than not.