change my view

When we talk about these types of topics on the Internet we are usually all speaking about slightly different things. For example "Coding will be replaced by AI" can be interpreted as 100% (every programmer) or partial (X%).

When we talk in the 100% sense the bar AI must achieve is MUCH higher than replacing some percentage. To replace 100% of programmers the AI needs to not only be on par with principal engineers but also be able to understand domain, real world implications, stakeholder input and a bunch of other goodies engineers do behind the scenes other than writing code.

When we talk about the partial percentage, the bar is low. Companies already take shortcuts such as outsourcing or greenlighting a proof of concept for production without proper design. There are MANY terrible programmers employed today who produce code slower and worse than even the halicigenic mess that is today's modern llms.

The budget for replacing these subpar programmers is proportional to their salary. If we choose the arbitrary pay of 75k for these programmers, that means we could spend up to 75k on AI compute costs per year and still break even. This doesn't even need to be fully autonomous as the remaining senior programmers will be expected to pick up the slack whether they want to or not.

Tldr;

AI will definitely replace some programmers but not all programmers.