> We'll probably need less and less developers as AI advance. Just like we need less manual labor in farms today.
When my team gets crunched, it's not usually because we can't write the code fast enough. It's because of product requirements (changing, needing to be fleshed out, being unrealistic, being understood properly by QA, being adapted to the realities of reasonable code, not existing, etc.).
On top of that, needing fewer workers to do X work !== getting X work done cheaper. Quite often, it means getting 2X, 3X, 10X work done. As an overall trend, modern society has increased worker productivity dramatically over the last few decades, yet many work as many or more hours than they used to. We could get the same results with fewer workers, or we could make them work more. We know what 99% of CEOs will choose.
Of course, maybe it will reduce developer jobs. I'm not ruling that out entirely. But when (not if) we create an alien intelligence that can wipe out our industry, we may have bigger concerns than steady employment.