Quoting D. Richard Hipp
- ID
- 8904
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 30 Jul 2026, 5:15 AM
- Fetched
- 30 Jul 2026, 6:16 AM
- Provider
- Simon Willison
- Category
- developer-ai
- Original URL
- https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/29/d-richard-hipp/
- Source URL
- https://simonwillison.net/atom/everything/
Summary
- Score
- 4.0
- Created
- 31 Jul 2026, 4:35 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_codersai_ml_learners
What happened
Simon Willison shares a quote from D. Richard Hipp drawing an analogy between SQL's impact on COBOL programmers and current AI trends: SQL automated the expensive work of writing code to query large datasets, but programmers didn't disappear—their jobs simply shifted. Hipp frames this as a simplification of what happened, implying AI may follow a similar pattern.
Why it matters
The quote offers a concrete historical analogy for framing AI-assisted coding: SQL didn't eliminate programmers, it changed what they specify vs. what they hand-write. For builders deciding how much to lean on AI code generation, the takeaway is to focus on becoming the person who writes the specification, not the person whose job is the mechanical generation. There are no actionable technical details beyond this framing.
Discussion angle
Is the SQL/COBOL analogy actually accurate for AI code generation, or does it break down because SQL is a declarative language with well-defined semantics while AI-generated code is probabilistic and harder to verify?