"From COBOL to Copilots: Why “No-Code” Never Kills the Coder" - Sam Bishop (PyCon AU 2026)

(Sam Bishop) Every few years somebody swears the newest tool to magically avoid needing developers will boot developers out of a job. Yet here we are, still coding, still shipping. Come along for a quick tour from COBOL’s “English you can compile” to today’s LLM powered vibe coding agents and see why each wave of “code without coders” crashed on the same rocks. You’ll leave with a pocketful of history, a nose for hype, and concrete ways to pair AI helpers with your hard-won craft instead of handing the keys over. https://2026.pycon.org.au/schedule/K3B9LZ/ python, pycon, australia, programming, conference, technical, developers, panel, sessions, libraries, frameworks, community, sysadmins, students, education, data, science Videos licensed as CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 PyCon AU is the national conference for the Python programming community, bringing together professional, student and enthusiast developers, sysadmins and operations folk, students, educators, scientists, statisticians, and many others besides, all with a love for working with Python. Licensed as CC BY-NC-SA - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Produced by Next Day Video Australia: https://nextdayvideo.com.au Fri Aug 28 16:30:00 2026 AEST (UTC+10) at Ballroom 1