Quoting D. Richard Hipp
Simon Willison · Simon Willison · 2026-07-29
SQLite creator D. Richard Hipp, quoted by Simon Willison, argues that SQL's replacement of COBOL query code offers a historical template for understanding how AI will transform programming jobs rather than eliminate them.
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Extraction
Topics: ai-and-jobsprogramming-careerssql-historyhistorical-analogy
Claims
- SQL replaced much of the bespoke query code that COBOL programmers previously wrote by hand.
- The introduction of SQL changed programming jobs rather than eliminating them.
- This historical pattern from SQL's rise provides a useful analogy for how AI may reshape today's programming roles.
Key quotes
Then SQL comes along—I'm simplifying this only a little bit—and it gives you this convenient way so people could just specify. With a very simple specification, you can generate all of that code that you had to pay the expensive COBOL programmer to do before. That didn't mean programmers went away. It just meant the job changed a little bit.