This is a drafty, sloppy and emotional response to this blog post, titled “Code was never the hard part” is an insult to all programmers

It was indeed never the hard part. Senko and I seem to approach the problem from different perspectives.

I've personally had too much experience with developers who had only one marketable skill - reading and writing code. They came into IT because it offered good money, and they never seem to feel the need to learn anything about the actual value of the code they are writing. 

In my perspective, on the other side of the barricade are genuinely motivated product-oriented people. They see what's needed, they understand the business and customer needs, and their hands are tied because they can't code.

I see an inversion here. Developers coasted on one skill. Product people were limited by missing one skill. LLMs took away the only skill of developers, and plugged the gap for product people.

You may say, developer does not equal developer. But I'm talking about developers. I'm not talking about engineers. A developer who understands business and customer needs, and can reason about and solve complex problems, and is willing to actually do it, is not a developer - they're an engineer.

And that's why I fundamentally disagree with Senko. Code was indeed NEVER the hard part.