This is missing the fact that budding programmers will also embrace these technologies, in order to get stuff done and working and fulfill their curiosity. They will in fact grow up to be much more "AI native" than current more senior programmers, except that they are turbocharging their exploration and learning by having, well, a full team of AI programmers at their disposal.
I see it like when I came of age in the 90ies, with my first laptop and linux, confronted with the older generation that grew up on punchcards or expensive shared systems. They were advocating for really taking time to write your program out on paper or architecting it up front, while I was of the "YOLOOOO, I'll hack on it until it compiles" persuasion. Did it keep me from learning the fundamentals, become a solid engineer? No. In fact, the "hack on it until it compiles" became a pillar of today's engineering: TDD, CI/CD, etc...
It's up to us to find the right workflows for both mentoring / teaching and for solid engineering, with this new, imo paradigm-changing technology.
AI native like recent digital natives, who have more time using software but far less time exploring how it works and less overall success at using digital tools?
AI reminds me of calculators. For someone who is proficient in math, they boost speed. For those learning math, it becomes a crutch and eventually stops their ability to learn further because their mind can't build upon principles fully outsourced to the machine.
Yet calculators don't seem to have reduced the number of people in mathematics, engineering and other mathematics heavy fields. Why would it be any different with people using AI to learn coding?
Another aspect this is missing is that, if AI works well enough to fire people (it already does, IMO), there is a whole world of software that was previously out of reach to be built. I wouldn't build a custom photography app for a single individual, nor would I write a full POS system for 3 people bakery. The costs would be prohibitive. But if a single developer/product designer can now be up to the challenge, be it through a "tweak wordpress plugins until it works" or through more serious engineering, there is going to be a whole new industry of software jobs out there.
I know that it works because the amount of softwrae I now write for friends, family or myself has exploded. I wouldn't spend 4 weekends on a data cleanup app for my librarian friend. But I can now, in 2-3 h, get something really usable and pretty, and it's extremely rewarding.
I see it like when I came of age in the 90ies, with my first laptop and linux, confronted with the older generation that grew up on punchcards or expensive shared systems. They were advocating for really taking time to write your program out on paper or architecting it up front, while I was of the "YOLOOOO, I'll hack on it until it compiles" persuasion. Did it keep me from learning the fundamentals, become a solid engineer? No. In fact, the "hack on it until it compiles" became a pillar of today's engineering: TDD, CI/CD, etc...
It's up to us to find the right workflows for both mentoring / teaching and for solid engineering, with this new, imo paradigm-changing technology.