Programming

Thanks for the quote, it caused me to actually read the source, which I enjoyed. It's a good idea to put these thoughts into the post body.

As to abstraction layers I am reminded of "I have seen further because I have stood on the shoulders of giants", and yet you must climb to those shoulders, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, and you will see further the more you understand the layers below.

I suspect it follows the pattern of a tree, you can only reach further up if your roots are deep enough to support it. A seed can grow wherever planted, hence new coders will do fine, and eventually come to this point (maybe toppling a few times, putting down more roots in response). A mature fruit tree has many years of bearing fruit.

As to AI making the process more soulless, mayhap, but making programmers more exploitable and fungible, almost certainly, but that's the point.