Comment by torginus
16 hours ago
The “everyone should code” idea has been done and shown to fail for the past 15 years - I pretty much completely agree, and this idea shows the outsized importance on programming as some kind of inherently superior activity, and bringing the ability to program to the masses as some kind of ultimate good.
If you've worked long enough and had interacted with people with varied skillsets, people who don't code aren't only there for show, in fact, depending on the type of company you work at, their jobs might be genuinely more important for the company's success than yours.
I spent a very frustrating 20 minutes with someone this week (a nice person I like, which is why I spent this time) explaining that the Python code chatgpt had provided them would just copy files from one folder to another and was no different from using Windows drag and drop copy.
It would not do any of the things they thought (lots of parsing and file renaming that it took a while for them to articulate). We also discussed how the corporate IT would not be installing a Python interpreter on their computer. Oh what's that? Let me explain. And so on.
ChatGPT didn't help, in this situation, as it turned out.