Simon Willison’s Weblog

The more time I spend using LLMs for code, the less I worry for my career - even as their coding capabilities continue to improve.

Using LLMs as part of my process helps me understand how much of my job isn't just bashing out code.

My job is to identify problems that can be solved with code, then solve them, then verify that the solution works and has actually addressed the problem.

A more advanced LLM may eventually be able to completely handle the middle piece. It can help with the first and last pieces, but only when operated by someone who understands both the problems to be solved and how to interact with the LLM to help solve them.

No matter how good these things get, they will still need someone to find problems for them to solve, define those problems and confirm that they are solved. That's a job - one that other humans will be happy to outsource to an expert practitioner.

It's also about 80% of what I do as a software developer already.