2023 Top Episodes - The End of Programming is Nigh

Is the end of programming nigh? That's the big question posed in this episode recorded earlier in 2023. It was very popular among listeners, and with the topic being as relevant as ever, we wanted to wrap up the year by highlighting this conversation again.

If you ask Matt Welsh, he'd say yes, the end of programming is upon us. As Richard McManus wrote on The New Stack, Welsh is a former professor of computer science at Harvard who spoke at a virtual meetup of the Chicago Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), explaining his thesis that ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot represent the beginning of the end of programming.

Welsh joined us on The New Stack Makers to discuss his perspectives about the end of programming and answer questions about the future of computer science, distributed computing, and more.

Welsh is now the founder of fixie.ai, a platform they are building to let companies develop applications on top of large language models to extend with different capabilities.

For 40 to 50 years, programming language design has had one goal. Make it easier to write programs, Welsh said in the interview.

Still, programming languages are complex, Welsh said. And no amount of work is going to make it simple. 

Learn more from The New Stack about AI and the future of software development:

Top 5 Large Language Models and How to Use Them Effectively

30 Non-Trivial Ways for Developers to Use GPT-4

Developer Tips in AI Prompt Engineering