I was a management/business consultant specializing in operations improvement - the “do more with less” guy, using whatever the client already had. When it came to improvement solutions that involved a new or modified software component, I learned the following:
1. You cannot automate that which you don’t do (and do well) manually. Cf, comments above about treadle-driven wood turning, or pretty much any software development project. Why don’t they know what they want? Because they’ve never done it before in any way/shape/form (MRP2 anyone??). Which leads to point 2.
2. Software development is often more like R&D than manufacturing. Business requirements are fuzzy, ill-defined, or of the kitchen sink variety. Why? Because at the outset there’s no real definition of functional requirements, only a vague sense that some sort of software application should be able to do the job.
3. The comment about AI being no more consequential to a real developer than a wrench is to structural engineer was fun to read. At least until AGI comes in and takes over all the work you used to do as a structural engineer. Then the only job you’ll be able to get as a structural engineer will be the one that actually needs to use a wrench. At least that’s something. In this way, AI and devs are going to have a very different relationship, I think.