Terraform deskilled us too. No one is saying, "SREs should configure their infra by hand sometimes to not lose that skill".
If AI can handle it, great! We have a new tool -- let's make the tool better.
Let's figure out how to use AI to make us detect and resolve issues faster, and even better, prevent issues. I've always said we can't consistently hit 5 9's without automatic detection and remediation. We are there now.
Let's get everyone to 5 9s with AI!
Opus 5.5 is quite effective at generating Terraform for a "typical" app that needs a load balancer, compute, and a database or two. That's the exact sort of cookie-cutter, rote work that AI is perfect for and no one is really going to miss.
AWS condensed 5 SMEs from the NOC into 1 expensive cPanel wannabe and so it goes, and will continue to go.
That ship (of Theseus) has sailed. Computing is going to become intensely personal again.
Along the same lines, Docker "deskilled" a lot of what used to be called "sysadmins."
> SREs should configure their infra by hand sometimes to not lose that skill
Actually... yeah, I'd totally say that. Some SREs in my company never wrote a single line of HCL that wasn't a call to a in-house, pre-approved module. They think they know Terraform - they don't, and they don't know what's under these modules either.