Don't forget that when you're using it in your own domain you can at least catch its many mistakes and hallucinations, but "Citizen Devs" aren't going to have a knowledge base to do that.

The hat : chef analogy is even less apposite than the table saw! At least the table saw serves an important function in that trade.

Capability? I have to push back on that (AI sounding joke, yes).

Point is, if I give a person a calculator, it doesn't even make them the tiniest bit of a mathematician. Nor if I give them a pencil, either. The tool never, ever makes the tradesperson.

Whatever's happening with LLMs, it's not making people programmers. It's how you use the tool, which validates that.

It doesn't, it's just that people keep making comparisons between AI and basic tools of specific trades, but none of those tools work the way AI does.

(I mean, I guess as soon as you start whacking things together with a hammer, you technically sort of are being a carpenter, but that's not the point.)

Not for you! You have to actually know how to do that, and physically push the stock through the blade. If you know zero about a table saw, you're more likely to turn a piece of wood into a projectile than to cross-cut it accurately. Again: not something you can say about a coding agent.

you missed the "for you"

It is obvious what the parent poster is saying, and it's substantively wrong. Give someone a table saw and they're essentially no closer to being a woodworker. It's tricky to use a table saw (trickier still to use it safely).

These tool analogies are self-soothing for programmers who see agents is simple tools of their trade. But the point of articles like this is that AI agents are more like spreadsheets --- only more so. They're devices that allow normal people without training or aptitude to do things with computers that only programmers were doing before. They displace programmers.

In that sense, the closest physical analogy to a coding agent is probably a 3D printer. But: a really good 3D printer, into which hundreds of billions of dollars had been invested entirely for the purpose of making the printer work weirdly well even for people who have no interest in the different kidns of filament spools.

Bomb squad technician seems more pertinent here.

Doctors different mate. There a shit ton of people who just bought a table saw and now are good carpenters.

The claim I responded to was nothing but weak elitist gatekeeping. Such people should think really hard why they are how they are. It's ob obnoxious.