AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less
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AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less
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Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less
#2I agree, related story I lurk on a few dev community discords and I’m seeing more people come in to ask questions to help debug code created by gpt. My optimistic side thinks it is bringing more people in to the communities who are empowered to try things out. A counterpoint is they wouldn’t have to ask for help on buggy ai code if they had used stack overflow instead :)
Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less
#3I agree, related story I lurk on a few dev community discords and I’m seeing more people come in to ask questions to help debug code created by gpt. My optimistic side thinks it is bringing more people in to the communities who are empowered to try things out. A counterpoint is they wouldn’t have to ask for help on buggy ai code if they had used stack overflow instead :)
They probably would, it's just that the question would be immediately closed as a duplicate of something almost completely unrelated.
Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less
#4I agree. However it will increase the bimodal distribution between normal developers and the extremely skilled developers.
Salaries on the whole will drop, and we likely see an increase in outsourcing.
AI can reduce the barriers between languages and cultural customs as well.
Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less
#5The talk around AI and developers makes me think of Jevons Paradox [0] where more efficient use of a resource increases it's consumption rather than decreases it.
Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less
#6They said that AI would've disrupted the language translation industry, it actually helped it a ton.
Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less
#7> AI-assisted coding products drastically reduce the barrier to entry to becoming a “developer.”
Regardless of the “random person thinking out loud with nothing but their own opinion as evidence” aspect to this article, they really are on the money with this one little fragment of their post.
Lots and lots of developers, and no meaningful difference between someone who took a two week “how do I write prompts” course and someone who spent 4 years at university. Learning programming. Or law. Or business. Or teaching. Or writing.
That’s the future I see coming, in probably the next 3 years.
However, as great that might be for companies who like cheap ass labour, it may not be great for individuals…
I think it’s fair to say it’ll be disruptive, that’s for sure.
Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less
#8> AI-assisted coding products drastically reduce the barrier to entry to becoming a “developer.”
Only reason FANG employees are not paid McDonalds salary is because of the barrier to entry.
The barrier will go down yes, but so will wages.
Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less
#9>I propose a simple lens to settle this debate: look around you and count how many products or services you use regularly that you wish are better digitized or “software-ized.” Unless and until that number is 0, there will be more developers, not less.
While this is a great argument that there will be more software in the future (something that I don't think anyone disputes), it's not an argument in favor of the proposition that there will be more developers, because the whole point of AI-driven development is to automate what a developer does.
One reason there are a lot of businesses still using antiquated systems is that 1) the systems work for their purposes, so their need is not acute; and 2) custom software development is expensive. Your local gym can't afford to pay someone thousands of dollars for a custom app (or even hundreds of dollars for a customized version of an existing app). But AI-driven development promises an order of magnitude drop in cost. So yes, we should see a lot more digitization as it becomes available.
I do agree in the short term that it won't drive the number of developers down, since for the foreseeable future skilled people will be needed to oversee the AI product. But it will vastly increase productivity. Unfortunately, if history is any guide developers will not reap any of the rewards for the increased productivity, and their real wages may actually decline.
Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less
#10Sure, just as growth of new tech will always create more jobs. But there is a twist: a whole generation of people get fucked over. Or maybe multiple generations. Sure, they can always learn new skills, right? RIGHT?
Downvote me as you wish, plesbians.