Let’s assume that. Now, if a company can use AI to churn out code without developers, the question is then: who’s going to ask the AI what kind of code to write? Would that job be now taken by old software developers? Or would someone else (managers?) do that? Who’s gonna review the generated code as well?
If a company can now move faster because code gets deployed faster: what are companies gonna do with the gained time? Well, develop more features, right? And probably they will find out that now they need to deliver really complex features to beat their competitors. Perhaps we soon find that while AI can generate code just fine, they cannot yet perhaps generate truly complex systems? (i.e., AI cannot generate code that doesn’t resemble a bit their training material… so basically you don’t know what you don’t know).
I think if software developer jobs are taken over by AI, software developers will still be employable doing something related to software development. Perhaps not writing “raw code” anymore, but definitely using AI to meet customer needs. If any, AI will make companies in need of more developers (we’ll need to find another name for ourselves) I think. 50 years code, code wasn’t what companies needed, they wanted to solve business problems… but it turns out you need code for that. AI doesn’t change that, I think: we may not write code anymore and use AI to solve business needs, but we still need
people to operate that AI.
AGI is a different thing, though. But then I don’t think we are close to that.
It may sound a bit pedantic, but this is why I prefer the term "software engineer". I don't write code. I solve problems, typically by writing code. AI just shortens the gap between my intuition and solving the problems. Yes it will obviate the need for me to be in the loop in some cases, but in the same way that automation obviates the need for coal miners and other mundane, dangerous, or otherwise uninspiring jobs, AI will obviate the need for us to write boilerplate, setup the 100000th CRUD app of our careers, write the same login endpoint for the 50000th time, etc... In our lifetimes, I'm doubtful that AI will replace my creativity and ability to synthesize large amounts of multi-domain information into a reasonable solution for end-users. I'm not doubtful that will happen eventually, I just don't see it impacting my job prospects prior to my retirement.
With some people still around to confirm the lower level parts are working as expected. I've already moved more to the describing the technical solution rather than implementing it. Hopefully this puts me in a good place.
If my job becomes about telling a chatbot to write code and not actually doing any coding myself, I think I'll find a new career because that sounds hellish
Yeah already experiencing this. Things take the same time just that my ambitions on what to build in that time is much bigger. And if everyone is shipping such ambitious software then we all have to up our game
If a company can now move faster because code gets deployed faster: what are companies gonna do with the gained time? Well, develop more features, right? And probably they will find out that now they need to deliver really complex features to beat their competitors. Perhaps we soon find that while AI can generate code just fine, they cannot yet perhaps generate truly complex systems? (i.e., AI cannot generate code that doesn’t resemble a bit their training material… so basically you don’t know what you don’t know).
I think if software developer jobs are taken over by AI, software developers will still be employable doing something related to software development. Perhaps not writing “raw code” anymore, but definitely using AI to meet customer needs. If any, AI will make companies in need of more developers (we’ll need to find another name for ourselves) I think. 50 years code, code wasn’t what companies needed, they wanted to solve business problems… but it turns out you need code for that. AI doesn’t change that, I think: we may not write code anymore and use AI to solve business needs, but we still need people to operate that AI.
AGI is a different thing, though. But then I don’t think we are close to that.