Lately some high-profile tools have emerged that can help in programming like Github Copilot and ChatGPT. Is the programming job market going to shrink because of this? I think I will be able to find a programming job even in the year 2050, but before I reveal why, I'll lead with some exploration of ChatGPT. I'll start with an experiment. I'll ask ChatGPT directly whether it will replace programmers, and then will ask it to program a neural network for me.

A "new milestone in competitive programming" was trumpeted by Google's British AI subsidiary DeepMind earlier this month, when it unveiled AlphaCode, a system it claims can write fully fledged computer programmes that compare favourably to the work of humans. Software development has long been pinpointed as an area where AI can have a significant impact, and with the advances AlphaCode and other systems offer, is the prospect of machines replacing human coders a realistic one? DeepMind says AlphaCode is capable of understanding a problem then writing a programme which solves that problem. It says it has tested the system against people who took part in coding contests and found that its results rank within the top 54% of human participants. "Solving competitive programming problems is a really hard thing to do, requiring both good coding skills and problem-solving creativity in humans," said Google software engineer Petr Mitrichev, who takes part in coding competitions.

Are machines going to replace programmers? Or how software creates other software. I started doing some home baking recently. It started, like with a lot of other people. I started doing some home baking recently.

I started doing some home baking recently. It started, like with a lot of other people, during the pandemic lockdown period when I got tired of buying the same bread from the supermarket every day. In all honesty, my bakes are passable, not very pretty but they please the family, which is good enough for me. Yesterday I stumbled on a YouTube video on how a factory makes bread in synchronised perfection and it broke a bit of my heart. All the hard work kneading dough amounts to nothing compared to spinning motors tumbling through a mechanised giant bucket. As I watch rows and rows of dough rising in unison spirals up the proofing carousel then slowly rolling into a constantly humming monstrous oven to become marching loaves of bread, something died in me. When the loaves zipped themselves into sealed bags and dumped themselves into packing boxes, I tell myself that they don't have the same craftsmanship (in my mind) as someone who is making bread with love, for his family. But deep inside me, I understand that if bread depended on human bakers only, it would be a whole lot more expensive, a lot more people would go hungry.