"I firmly believe that AI will not replace developers, but a developer using AI will replace a developer who does not." Ugh, anyone who says that and really believes it can no longer see common sense through the hype goggles. It's just stupid and completely 100% wrong, like saying all musicians will use autotune in the future because it makes the music better. It's the same as betting that there will be no new invent…
Full disclosure, I'm on the Kilo Code team, but I read your analogy, and I have to respectfully disagree.
Musicians don't all use autotune, because autotune is a specalized technology used to elicit a specific result. BUT, MOST musicians use technology; either to record their work, or mix their tracks, or promote their work.
You could definitely say "A musician who doesn't post online to a platform or save their work in certain audio formats at the studio are going to be replaced by musicians who do."
Are there musicians who still release their work on vinyl or cassette tapes and prefer the sound of an stage with no microphones? Sure. But to dismiss the overarching influence of technology on the process would be ignoring where the progress is going.
I'd argue that people who use Kilo Code don't just "autotune" their code, they're using it as a tool that augments their workflow and lets them build more, faster. That's valuable to an employer. Where the engineer is still vital is in their ability to know what to ask for, how to ask for it, and how to correct the tool when it's wrong, because it'll never been 100% right.
It's just not hype, it's inevitable.