[thedelanyo]

"one being so good that anyone can become a software engineer".

Of course, smartphones' cameras are so good and accessible, but not anyone who became a professional photographer?

And of course, isn't software engineering far beyond than simply writing code in any form - whether in English or in symbols?

[conception]

Yes but smartphones decimated photography jobs, especially on the low end.

[mschuster91]

Pareto principle in action - smartphones are good enough for 80% of use cases. And so is AI for a lot of junior-level work.

The problem is, when there are no trainee and junior positions (and, increasingly, intermediate) being filled any more... there is no way for people to rise to senior levels. And that is going to screw up many industries hard.

[SwtCyber]

Smartphone cameras didn't turn everyone into a professional photographer, but they did radically expand who can take usable photos, experiment, and occasionally produce something valuable without years of training

[WalterBright]

Programming is mostly a craft. Engineering would be more like designing algorithms.

[immibis]

That's research. Engineering would be programming, but well. Taking into account future maintenance concerns and so on. Seems like the software world doesn't do a lot of it.

[thesmtsolver2]

Just like word processing software and LLMs meant anyone can become a journalist. /s