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?
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.
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)
Welcome to being a luddite.
It’s not actually about hating the progression of technology, it’s realizing that your labor has been leveraged against you. You will not bear any of the true fruits, because your bosses will use the fruits of your labor to purchase the AI to replace you.
It’s because the labor market is fucked and developers needed unions 20 years ago instead of thinking because they were “rockstars” and “made the big bucks” that they didn’t need anybody else.
We wouldn’t have to ask these kind of questions if the fruits of our labor were being equitably distributed.
Basically in the scenario described, this is what’s happening to developers:
Capitalism is an auto-immune disease of society.
Unions in the us have ruined any interest in joining. Other countries have different imblementations. If I could start from scratch but laws favor the existing taking over.
I was going to learn how to give a really good handjob but the AI robots will probably take over that too.
Riot.
How’s that working for everyone in the USA? How many “riots” or protests have we done that yield nothing?
Turn up the heat. Asking nicely has never worked.
https://stacker.com/business-economy/30-victories-workers-rights-won-organized-labor-over-years
Here’s a half decent starting point.
That will never happen, or at least with how ai currently works. It’s basically a glorified autocorrect, it uses the same technology underneath.
But presuming it does, yes. We will have to go to another industry, like AI prompting. Coding is a tiny part of professional software development.
Glorified autocorrect… YES! It’s a really good analogy that i will use to temper the expectation of my boss. Also: AI hallucination is just a fancy way to say ’it’s a wrong answer’.
Yes, exactly this.
When compilers came along, some people honestly thought it would dumb down programming so much that anyone could do it.
When high level programming languages came along, they rejoiced again - now finally anyone can make software.
When Intellisense meat you no longer had to remember variable names, write your own imports and could guess how most libraries work, the bells rang out once again in celebration.
And now we have AI, it’s cool but really just another step like all those steps before. For me, it’s a replacement for the documentation I never read anyway. I can ask an AI a stupid question rather than bothering a human developer.
These days it’s my job to manage a small team of developers - when I ask them why they wrote a stupid thing that makes no sense, 90% of the time, the answer is that an AI wrote it for them.
It’s basically a glorified autocorrect, it uses the same technology underneath.
I dislike AI too but this is just ridiculous if you think that’s true. Lots of my colleagues in SWE use full blown AI development tools. I even used Claude AI to write an entire C# application, I did ZERO coding, yes, literally nothing! I have NEVER coded in C# before, I gave it all requirements, worked with it like a project manager… it created a full blown working application that was beyond my expectations.
Coding is a tiny part of professional software development.
Also not true. Some days, all I do is code. I have a daily standup, maybe some meetings with UI/UX. It’s not like I’m out there going out in the world though repairing ATMs or something. 65% of my job is coding
Some days, all I do is code.
So your instincts are correct. You need to learn the rest of the job, before the part you are doing is replaced by robots.
I even used Claude AI to write an entire C# application, I did ZERO coding, yes, literally nothing! I have NEVER coded in C# before, I gave it all requirements, worked with it like a project manager… it created a full blown working application that was beyond my expectations.
I achieved the same in 2000 with a home grown framework, and again in 2006 with Ruby on Rails.
Astonishingly fast prototyping is a quarter of a centrury old.
- How are you enjoying maintaining this app in production? (Or is it not there yet, because it’s just very nice for a prototype?)
- How did Claude AI do at deploying it?
- Are you satisfied with Claude AIs answers to your boss’ traffic analytics and load balancing questions?
- When will Claude AI let you know how the A/B tests proved out for optimizing sales?
- Or doesn’t it do those things yet?
Computers are replacing us. They’ve been at it since their inception.
Keep learning the trade and you’ll find there’s a metric ton more that computers cannot help with, than that they can help with. That will get better. I’m working at making it get better.
I figure that my learning how to train the computers is job security. I didn’t count on it being a harsh lesson in how long it’s going to be before computers get not stupid.
I do have a plan for when I automate myself out of a job. It’s just not a plan I’m really counting on, because I’ve been trying for decades.
I’ve been constantly advised to have an exit plan, for when the computers replaced me, for the entirety of those same decades.
Most often by the same people who want me to charge less.
Funny thing, that. Take care who you listen to on this topic, and that their motives are.
Motive is to charge the rest of you a shit ton of money before the AI finally replace us.
It does help me if you all don’t buy into the bullshit that CEOs have been spouting about replacing us all.
We’ve all been undercharging for about 3 years due to it. AI hasn’t accomplished jack shit, but a lot of you have accepted lower pay than you probably should.
What are you using to get Claude to write for you? I’ve been using it to write a full stack Go/javascript app but it needs a lot of handholding.
There will always need to be a human operator to guide the machine.
I’m using Cursor. It’s done some very impressive things for me. https://www.cursor.com/features
Lots of my colleagues in SWE use full blown AI development tools.
We all use full blown AI development tools. Before that we had other tricks that did the same thing.
We must beware mistaking the instrument for the musician, or we get sold a broken old instrument that doesn’t perform miracles outside it’s master’s hand.
And if it’s going to be full-blown AGI then we’ll become AI psychologists.
That’s something that we’re probably going to have to figure out quickly. We won’t though given the lack of accountability of those in power.
If SWEs are losing their jobs you can imagine a lot of other white collar workers will be as well. This would mean you will be competing with many other people in other fields. The large number of unemployed will reduce demand for goods produced by those companies that are also laying off workers due to automation.
This is a bit of a tragedy of the commons where companies adopt the technology to increase profits but actually disrupt the economy, potentially leading to their own collapse.
It’s impossible to really prepare for this scenario because it requires you to simultaneously be ready for retirement in the next few years but also riots. I’m just hoping for the best for now.
We won’t though given the lack of accountability of those in power.
That is not an inevitable condition.
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
Well if it can replace senior software engineers… Wouldn’t it also be able to do almost all of the other jobs? Or are you referring to some future where AI advances massively, but robotics does not and handymen are still safe?
I’d say if all humans are unemployed, society would change massively. We can’t really tell how that’d work. But if machines / AI do all jobs, get food on the table… I don’t really know what other people would be doing. I think I’d relax and pursue a few hobbies and interests. Or it’d be some dystopia where humankind is oppressed by the machines and I’d fight for the resistance.
But regardless… In a world like that, money wouldn’t work the way it does now. Neither would salaries for labor mean anything.
Yeah. In this wild scenario, only the people who can crack the robots security protocols, and reprogram them, will have any influence over society.
I promise to be a benevolent ruler.
Except Michael Bay will have to return to making Transformers movies full time. Sorry about that, in advance.
Or the people who own the robots and dictate their programming (/control them). That would be my concern. Unless they’re sentient and make decisions completely on their own, they can be used to oppress people to other people’s wishes. As it’s the case with all (modern) technology. And currently AI isn’t shaped by the people, but by a rich minority and big tech companies. And I see some issues with that, specifically, in the near future.
Agreed on all points.
That said, I am smarter than the asshole CEOs, and the current state of computer security is abysmal.
So there’s still some hope that we are barreling toward my (mostly) benevolent reign over endless Michael Bay blockbuster summers.
Hopefully, for everyone’s sake, reality will fall somewhere in between.
But joking aside, money isn’t the only form of power. There aren’t that many billionaires (compared to he rest of us) and a billionaire’s influence is limited by what the rest of us will or won’t do.
Lol. Yeah I get it. Though I still think the rich companies dictate a lot of things. They do a lot of lobbying and paying people to make sure it’s not them who funds the majority of the country, they choose how much you pay for medication and everyday items, they choose to spy on everyone on the internet. Make you buy things you don’t need, make housing prices subject to speculation. Make everyone addicted to their phone and spend like several hours a day with it. Separate society into filter bubbles. I think a lot of these things aren’t liked by the people. Or are extremely unhealthy. Yet, they are a thing and never change. I think because some people will this into existance. Sure, they’re far from being almighty. But it’s enough control they have over everyone already.
And I think as they can use the internet as a tool for their interests (which had ultimately been invented to connect people), they could as well do the same with AI. I mean they train those models and choose in which ways they’re biased. What the can and can not talk about. If that’s paired with the surveillance tech, that’s already inside of each smart TV, smart appliance or Alexa… It’ll be kind of a dystopian scifi movie where someone else watches your steps all day, uses that to manipulate people… some kind of puppet master whom the bots really work for.
I’m really unsure. Sure, almost everything can be hacked. But does that really have an effect on the broader picture? Everytime I see some major hack, the next day it’s business as usual and everything keeps working as it used to.
You have to understand what software can do, how to design it, and how it should interact with other systems in order to write software and not just code, and AI can’t do that. If you tell it to make you A, and what you really want is B, you’ll never get what you want.
Only about 10-20 percent of my job as a software engineer is writing code. AI can be really amazing at writing code, but unless it can do the other 80-90% of my job without me, I’ll be safe.
Now, whether middle and upper management will know this is an entirely different question. A lot of them think that lines of code written is a good measure of productivity, when in fact it’s often the opposite.
I foresee there being a big struggle for management to come to grips with the fact that AI is better suited at their job than ours.
My best days as a software dev are negative line days.
Hear, hear!
NegaSLOCS are the best SLOCS.
There are a lot of dumb takes here in the comments
Developer displacement works the same way it does for any other technology
The problem is not that the job is eliminated but that fewer are needed per unit of output
My startup only has 4 engineers because we don’t need 5
This trend will continue until the SV hiring bubble bursts
Even if we stipulate that, I’m not convinced it’s a big deal. The software field continues to grow like crazy and we can never find enough people to hire. If ai gets good enough to take the place of some of that hiring, fantastic!
Why would devs be displaced by an interactive search engine?
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.
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.
Same thing the rest of us replaced by AI are gonna do: live on the dole or starve
