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AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

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Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#21

Post by lnsru »

kfarr wrote: post #2

I 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 :)

Tried using such code generation for simple things in VHDL. It looked like VHDL, but failed badly. Maybe for more popular languages with more training Dara it works better.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#22

Post by BobbyJo »

vannevar wrote: post #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 prop…

Author's argument also rests on developers being the bottleneck. I think a lot of things that could be digitized, aren't for reasons that have little to do with software.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#23

Post by avgcorrection »

napsec wrote: post #5

The 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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

We should wish for technological progress causing more efficient (and in turn less) use of resources. It does not seem to be the case.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#24

Post by cube2222 »

I have a friend who needed to generate 400 random qr codes. Did the first half in 4 hours, going one by one through an online website.

Learning about it mid through that process I told her to try asking chatgpt to write a python script for it (she knows a bit of python, knows how to run a script etc.). Needed a pip install of the qr code lib, but other than that worked right away.

ChatGPT turned the next 4 hours of menial work into 10 minutes. This is the true incoming disruption.

People who just vaguely know how to program, getting a powerful tool that can assist them 95% of the way for simple automations like this.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#25

Post by avgcorrection »

wokwokwok wrote: post #19
jstx1 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still a big difference between someone with experience and someone without, LLMs haven't bridged that gap. Knowing how to use an LLM, having access to a good one, using it regularly anywhere you can, you would still get, what - 10%, 20% increase in productivity? It's significant but it's not "your experience and education don't matter" level of significant. And on the other side of the room some people are st…

> There's still a big difference between someone with experience and someone without, LLMs haven't bridged that gap Yet.

> Yet.

(c) 1960–

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#26

Post by biztos »

I think there will be more developers, not fewer -- but they might not be the same kind of people. If a subject-matter expert plus an AI Wrangler can create software as well as two programmers, why shouldn't they?

But I also think that if, like the author, your optimistic scenario is that things will be better "software-ized," you're in for a disappointing century. The incentives that lead to most software being crap are not going to change in the slightest.

Instead, more things will get software. Some of it will be good, most of it will not.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#27

Post by sangnoir »

stuckinhell wrote: post #4

I 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.

I bet AI-reliant developers are going to be more reviled than PHP developers way back during peak PHP-hate times.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#28

Post by throw_pm23 »

vannevar wrote: post #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 prop…

I look around sometimes and see digitized/software-ized products I wish weren't. So the number can be negative.

One example: restaurant menus. Second example: car audio volume buttons/knobs.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#29

Post by rednalexa »

avgcorrection wrote: post #23
napsec wrote: post #5

The 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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

We should wish for technological progress causing more efficient (and in turn less ) use of resources. It does not seem to be the case.

Yeah. My worry with Fusion eventually being solved is it will make energy so abundant that we will find novel ways to waste it. Ideally it is used to solve things like our climate crisis - but who knows.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#30

Post by wokwokwok »

byyyy wrote: post #20

>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. What? How does this logic work out? Is this not considering how AIs can software-ize products and services in place of a software developer? How about talking about ho…

> How about talking about how AI can empower a single developer to do the job of 10 people?

I think you missed some of the nuance of the article.

You’re talking about how many jobs there will be, and they’re (also) talking about how many people will qualify as “developers”.

Will the number of jobs go up or down or stay the same? Who knows? Probably down.

…but that’s only half the story.

Will the number of “developers” able to do what only “developers” can do now go up down or stay the same?

Well, since my mom told me she put some php on her Wordpress site from chat-gpt last week, I’m gonna sit in the “a considerable number more developers will materialise” camp. I.e. a huge glut in the number of people competing for that (probably shrinking) pool of jobs.

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