Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't

Please try to read my message again. I never said the things you're implying I said. I literally said not gonna replace all, and low effort low risk stuff.

Do you think that not even 0.00001 projects on those websites could have been a good payday for a software engineer/team? Do you think what took 3 people before for a low effort saas is not going to be done by 1 person now?

Agree, AIs are better decision-makers on average than people (just look at the grifters we've given power to). These are machines that can perform more advanced mathematics than even the most advanced mathematicians.

We have been aggressively and enthusiastically automating away software engineering for the entire history of the computer industry. Every time we do so, we are able to build bigger, better things more quickly. When this happens, our work becomes more valuable and expectations rise to match. The world’s appetite for software has been insatiable so far. AI hasn’t replaced software engineers because every time we become more productive, the goalposts move.

There’s two things that could put an end to this. Firstly, we might finally become productive enough to exhaust the world’s appetite for software. I don’t see any evidence of this happening, but if somebody wants to make this argument, they should be clear about why this time is different to the entire history of the computer industry so far.

Secondly, if AI becomes superhuman at software engineering when acting autonomously. Specifically, AI+human developer no longer outperforms AI alone. So far, all the available evidence seems to show AI as a force multiplier for developers and that for good results, at best you can have AI doing 90% of the work as long as an expert developer is driving things.

There isn’t strong evidence that either of these situations is going to happen in the near future, so I think software engineers are safe for now. But if you have a narrow skill set and you are focused in particular areas (e.g. front-end web development), then I would worry more, because even if AI cannot replace software engineers in general, it’s quite likely to be able to completely consume specific domains with generalists holding the reins.

“Software developers” and “software engineers” distinction has the same energy when one uses to pat oneself on a back when they call themselves “expat” instead of an “immigrant”. You write code, all the huff and puff around “architecturing”, and “alignment”, and “knowing what to build” is just vapor. I’ve never met “software developer”, outside of online forums, who did “coding” and none of the latter.

I don’t think pointing at all the corporate coms about ai layoffs as fake invalidates the risk. The corporate stuff can be lies while the tech‘s impact could end up being real. It’s just noise in this context.

Similarly this assumption (the burger diagram in the article) showing execution phase shrinks but somehow everything else expands to keep the burger size the same seems less than plausible.

That said some portions of swe seem like they‘re still very far off from being threatened. Especially the portions where correctness is crucial. With say web dev you’ve got a lot more room to yolo it than say navigation code for rockets. The LLM can likely do both but I don’t think anyone is vibe coding the later any time soon