Can machine learning and AI make programmers obsolete? Can AI make software coding and debugging a thing of the past?

Last Updated: 03.07.2025 02:34

Can machine learning and AI make programmers obsolete? Can AI make software coding and debugging a thing of the past?

Agent, are you sure???? You’re lying again, aren’t you?

Let’s ask Claude Sonnet 3.5, which is quite the advanced model (at par with Deepseek V3 R1 and GPT 4o) a very simple question:

Your software developer job is safe for at least the next 100 years.

Talent show: Mocking out the first round of the NBA Draft - Chicago Sun-Times

And presto goes Claude, the clueless junior-dev (it also botched correctly showing //):

Ah. Claude Claude Claude.

As usual, I’ll make my point backed by verifiable examples.

How an unnoticed pregnancy complication almost ended a young Staten Island mom’s life - SILive.com

Let’s use the agent to see if it can search at least, when it doesn’t know?

Now, let’s think about that for a second or two. Such an elementary matter and such egregious error of omission!

Re——-aaaaalllllly.

Caitlyn Jenner’s Israel Pride Parade Visit Disrupted by Iran War Breakout - The Hollywood Reporter

Here’s the proof :

And ever so dutifully, Claude reports:

And hey Claude? There’s a reserved float division /. if both numbers are floats, for sure (19) but so can one use // even though both are integers (20):

US Steel workers see hope of job security in deal with Japan’s Nippon - Financial Times

To the reader/asker:

Claude boy, how do I do division and modulus in OCaml?

I don’t think so Claudeboy.

What are the potential side effects of combining Clonazepam and Propranolol?

And let’s use the latest, extra-capable model 4.1 from OpenAPI. The result:

You can do modulus with %. In fact, it’s the standard way to do it! (See command 17). And mod is deprecated (command 18):