Let’s assume that in 10 years, AI has advanced absurdly, insanely fast, and is now capable of doing everything a Senior SWE can do. It can program in 15 different languages, 95% accuracy with almost no mistakes, can create entire applications in minutes, and no more engineers or SWEs are needed… What will all the devs do? Do they just become homeless? Transition to medical field, nursing? Become tradespeople like plumbers, HVAC?
Coding is just a part of the overall “programming” problem. Most problematic areas are in translating what the customer wants into code (requirements analysis), modifying code to overcome specific constraints, integration, etc and etc
Don’t forget testing the code to make sure what is delivered actually matches what the customer wants.
They’re probably gonna laugh at the absurdity of the situation because some new popular language will come along and the AI will be back to pushing out broken code. That, or laugh because the code in well used languages will include a shit ton of vulnerabilities that wouldn’t be present if real devs had to double check code before pushing it out to the public.
back
When did it ever not push out broken code?
In this hypothetical situation?
In this hypothetical, why would we create new languages? What benefit does that have for AI-gen code?
So either we’re going to improve AI-gen to the point where we rely on it, or human devs are still important in which case new languages matter. The main exception here are languages specifically designed for AI, in which case error-rate would go down.
So either AI pushes out broken code and human devs are still important, or AI doesn’t push out broken code and new languages aren’t valuable.
Someone still has to write the instructions. AI might not become a replacement for the engineer, but a more powerful compiler, that is still fed with code written by engineers.
Yeah, I agree that’s the more likely scenario. People seem to worry way too much about AI, when it’s really only going to replace junior devs, and only for short-sighted companies.
But I mean many people have already lost their job because AI automated it away.
True, and many people have lost jobs because something else automated it away, like toll booth workers, grocery clerks, and telephone switchers, and computers (i.e. people who would compute things by hand).
Jobs disappearing because technology advances is natural. It sucks for those impacted, but it’s natural, and IMO it’s only a problem of new jobs aren’t created fast enough, or whole industries disappear. Fighting to keep jobs in spite of automation runs the risk of having an entire industry disappear, such as if dock workers win the fight to prevent automation on the docks, they’ll just all lose their jobs at the same time once automation can replace them all at once.
The better plan is to adjust and adapt as technology changes. If you’re entering CS or a recent grad, make sure you understand concepts and focus less on syntax. If you’re a mid level, learn to incorporate AI into your workflow to improve productivity. If you’re a senior, work toward becoming an architect and understand how to mitigate risks with poor quality code.
Fighting AI will at best delay things.
I think both can happen at the same time. There’s a lot of fkn nerds out there. (I’m a software developer myself)
They’re just gonna sit around and wait a few months until they are begged to come back and can demand more compensation. The current generative AI, which is not general AI, will not be able to replace high functioning jobs. Eventually, a lot of those software engineers will be asked back and get much more for their services.
Retire. All I ever wanted to be was a programmer. If I can’t do that anymore I’ll just retire. I’m saving/investing every penny I can just in case.
Same. If I can retire before my job is irrelevant, I’ll work on my own projects on my own terms. If I don’t, at least I have a nice pile of assets and can coast with another job.
That said, I don’t think people like you and I will have problems, because we’ll adapt. It’s the “programming is just a job” crowd that would have a lot of issues.
I’m not a programmer, but I don’t think I’d pay for code that was 95% accurate. That sounds buggy af
I am a programmer, and I also wouldn’t stand for that either. We also introduce bugs and are probably around that 95% rate, but at least we know the most important uses are correct and the person who introduced them can usually fix them quickly. With AI, there’s no guarantee where the bugs will occur.
You don’t have to pay for it. The billionaires do, and they will do it without hesitation
Fixing broken software some robot pushed to prod
Writing code is last thing you want to do as senior SWE because every line of code is potential debt and maintenence problem.
The just write code bro, figure out things later attitude is good for R&D, MVP and POC that is like 10% of job.Just like with art, writing code like drawing is just a skill. AI is trying to replace the obvious part (that is actually the reward from thinking and describing problem in your head) because it can’t replace thinking. Removing rewards bring us to depression, depression bring us to death.
Ergo AI will kill economy with no people left to replace it so we will end up to being monkas.
That’s why I’d say SWE will go to farm and wait untill people in cities will start starving to death because AI stopped working and there is nobody left to fix it.It’s funny how all trends extrapolated out lead to the plot of Idiocracy.
I am starting to believe that current “AI” is way for corporate to gatekeep the knowledge and as you said lead us to idiocracy. On the other hand people always amaze me on how they can collectively find the way out from these situations and turn the cards to their side. So there is always hope.
They’re going to keep doing their job, good luck to some manager who thinks they can be verbose enough to get their idea across
This thread is full of people comparing OPs hypothetical about 10 years from now with last year’s capability.
Will AI progress that fast? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It probably won’t get that good, but it doesn’t matter. If it gets as good as your average junior that’s going to mean something like 100% increase in productivity, which means 50% as many jobs and that’s going to be a BIG FUCKING DEAL.
Especially when it’s going to be replacing a lot of other types of office workers. What kind of job is your average software dev going to transition to? Tech support? Not anymore. UI Designer? LOL. Manager? And who are you going to be managing?
If the US doesn’t hit 15-20% unemployment in the next 10 years I’ll eat my hat. I’ll be eating it either way because I’ll be starving to death.
There is a hard limitation on LLM, it doesn’t and by definition can not have a criteria for truth, and unless something completely new emerges, it will never replace a junior, really. Some managers can be convinced that it did, but that will be a lie and the company that believes it will suffer.
It can transform some junior jobs for sure, some people might need to relearn some practices, there will probably be some shift in some methods, but unless something fundamentally new will appear, there is no way LLM will meaningfully replace meaningful amount of people
Finally free from the Golden Handcuffs, I’d use my extra time to do something I’ve always wanted, like music production, which would also inevitably be taken over by AI.
Thats a whole lot of heavy assumptions, doing some really heavy lifting.
They’ll either move up the food chain to higher-touch work where AI can’t compete, or they’ll do other things.
Keep in mind that most devs aren’t really all that good at their jobs, so it will probably be economically beneficial for them to do something else. I say this as a long-time hiring manager with many decades of experience in the field.
It can program in 15 different languages, 95% accuracy with almost no mistakes, can create entire applications in minutes
Only if you believe the hype. It can do that in best-case scenarios when the requirements are written as rigorously as code, or where it’s replicating a common pattern.
Do they just become homeless?
During previous layoffs, a lot of them left the field, and some of the rest founded startups. It wasn’t always the case that firms were founded by teenaged sociopaths with strong family connections to VC funding. There was a time when they were founded by people who knew how to do things.
Last time I used it the code it gave me wouldn’t actually run. After 6 iterations and fixing the rest it kind of worked. In theory that should only get better but I’m not sold yet.
I would never have expected it to run, be shocked if it did. You use AI to get over humps, get new ideas and approaches. It’s excellent for time saving in those cases.
AI isn’t ready to replace coders, but it’s quickly going to make a dent on the numbers needed.
AI isn’t ready to replace coders, but it’s quickly going to make a dent on the numbers needed.
Let me push back on this a bit - this belief comes from the assumption that I, as a hiring manager, need more team members because they can only type so fast.
My actual need for separate development team members is to achieve a bench depth of two people in each of the seven specializations necessary to keep my employer un-bankrupt. (My annual bonus is better if I somehow miraculously cover the 14 specializations necessary to make us never look like idiots. But these are wishes, not miracles.)
I don’t currently see any sign that AI will ever materially affect the number of people I need to hire.
In contrast, the specific individuals I hire have massive impact on how many others I need to hire. One person with three specializations brings me massive savings.
But I pay my people to understand our organizational domains of expertise. LLMs don’t bring any new understanding whatsoever into the organization.
I see your thought process there. But I’m not sure modern IDEs led to less devs. Time will tell but I just few most of this as vapor ware atm. Let’s also look at the fact that chatgpt is hemmoriging money even with high price tiers. It is possible this just burns itself out.
Ai-herder or Robot-farmer or Llama-raiser etc etc
devs still needed to ensure code is sane and not some insane hallucination.
Why would devs be displaced by an interactive search engine?
Honestly people are getting distracted here. Now lets say A.I makes developers 50% more productive thats a huge boost for smaller companies with only handful of developers.
Many companies are only thinking about reducing costs for themselves but at the same time they’re freeing up a lot of talent for new and old competitors.
Here’s some food for thought:
- Open source developers may use A.I to develop better software to close gap between paid alternatives. (Blender, Gimp, Krita, Linux distributions, mastodon, lemmy, pixelfed)
- Many LLM’s can already be ran freely and locally. These will only get better as technology progresses. This can make selling/profiting from A.I services a lot harder
- A.I may be used to block ads or obfuscate (create bunch of fake data) user data that is sold to advertisers.
- Some media sites are already using A.I to write articles. Whats the point when users may just use chatbot to get all the information without ever engaging with the source.
These are just few that come to mind. but the unkowns with this are quite terrifying.
Now lets say A.I makes developers 50% more productive
That’s wildly optimistic. If I recall correctly, early studies are showing the 51% of participants who saw any improvement, reported an average of a 20% improvement.
Even granting that optimism, since 5% of all software projects are on time and within budget, we may look forward to a whopping leap to 7.5 out of every hundred software projects arriving on time and under budget, in a best case scenario.
The hard truth no one wants to talk about is that the average software development team is awful.
This glorified parrot tool of LLMs is one of the coolest we have seen in awhile, but it’s not going to materially fix the awful state of the field of software development.
The average software development team doesn’t understand how to deliver high quality maintainable solitions on a reasonable timeline.
AI may mildly improve the delivery timelines of the still very incorrect and over-budget solutions delivered by the average development team.
That’s wildly optimistic. If I recall correctly, early studies are showing the 51% of participants who saw any improvement, reported an average of a 20% improvement.
Yes the value is wildly optimistic to match the expectations driven by all the hype from these companies pushing their LLM services.
Even granting that optimism, since 5% of all software projects are on time and within budget, we may look forward to a whopping leap to 7.5 out of every hundred software projects arriving on time and under budget, in a best case scenario.
The hard truth no one wants to talk about is that the average software development team is awful. The average software development team doesn’t understand how to deliver high quality maintainable solitions on a reasonable timeline.
You’re oversimplifying things here there are a lot more variables that influence success in software projects. The company you work for might have oversold the project, the client might only have vague understanding of what they really want, project management may fail to keep the costs, developers or timeline in check, client or the company you work for might have high employee turnover causing delays as new employees need proper induction to the project, the initial tech stack may become deprecated or obsolete mid-way the project, etc
You’re oversimplifying things here there are a lot
I think… we’re agreeing?
My point is that what is currently possible with AI doesn’t solve any of that.
People in this thread keep discussing growth in programmer productivity as if programmer typing speed and number of languages known are the limiting factors of programmer productivity. They are not. It’s all the other bullshit that makes (the vast majority of) programming projects fail.
My source: I know so many programming languages and I type insanely fast. My team is also productive beyond all reason. These two tidbits are only related in that I tried and failed with the first before succeeding with the second.
