I hate these X is the new bottleneck.

Coding was never a bottleneck, except when it was, and when it was, it still is.

Understanding is not a new bottleneck, except when it is, and when it is, it always was.

Do other industries do this? When somebody brings a nail gun to a framing job do carpenters say: “hammering was never a bottleneck” or do they say: “measuring is the new bottleneck”? The answer is neither. And in fact my analogy is flawed, we are talking about cabinet makers who just went to IKEA bought a ready made set in flat packaging and are now proudly claiming that “assembly is the new bottleneck”.

There was no single bottleneck to programing, and there is no single bottleneck to programing. If you have to pick one, user demand is perhaps the only real bottlneck. Creating software that users saw value in using is just as hard with AI or without it (arguably harder with AI... when all you have is a hammer and all that).

TFA almost reaches this conclusion at the end when they claim (in speech pattern which is suspiciously AI-like): “The point was always to augment, not just automate.”. If we are augmenting the user experience we are doing a good job and people may actually use the software we write... if no, well it doesn’t matter how well we understand or how fast we write the code (or have AI write it for us).