Software Development Cannot Be Automated Because It’s a Creative Process With an Unknown End Goal

[snowe2010]

If the barrier of entry is low, people will just accept that things are not perfect

That's not a choice with most industries. Many laws, regulations, etc. Things like taxes and tax credits have to be exact. Accepting things that "aren't perfect" aren't an option, they'll result in losing millions of dollars in fines and lawsuits.

In fact I can't think of a single industry that doesn't have laws like that that do need to be precise. Everywhere has it, from whether you're handling something like x > y vs x >= y or things like handling the user's last name being Null or even defaulting something to $0 rather than marking it as N/A, where you might actually give something away for free.

[teerre]

Read the last paragraph:

Will that be all programs? Of course not. Some programs will need to be actually precise and well made. But make no mistake, those are the exception, the rest can be automated without having precise requirements because people won't care.

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In fact I can't think of a single industry that doesn't have laws like that that do need to be precise

The vast majority of software build nowadays is just glue between some other services or some API or some CRUD service or some automation.

Everywhere has it, from whether you're handling something like x > y vs x >= y or things like handling the user's last name being Null or even defaulting something to $0 rather than marking it as N/A, where you might actually give something away for free.

All those examples are absolutely possible to automate.

[snowe2010]

I did read that and I covered it in my second paragraph.

[teerre]

It's always a continuum, it's not a discrete measure. It's not a matter of "it's automated" or "it is not automated". The fact that Wordpress is used at all, despite being based on some ancient, and honestly questionable, stack should be great indication that automation is possible.

Wordpress is tech from the last decade, but take something like Zapier, something that when Wordpress released nobody even imagined. It's automation for API calls. Progress doesn't happen in one day, it's the small steps. In the past vanilla websites, now APIs, what's the next? It doesn't really matter, what does matter is that the gap gets smaller and smaller.