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AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

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Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#51

Post by qsort »

rcme wrote: post #44
littlecranky67 wrote: post #16

I am believing that, too. Just imagine this: Take a Laptop with WinXP+Office 98 from the 2000 era and travel back in time to the 60s or 70s using a time machine. Show the power of Excel to any of those developers punching holes into a punch card, feeding room-sized "computers". Tell them that this "Excel" tool is used by business and sales people without any programming skills. Those developers would clearly tell the…

I disagree. Think about it like this: Excel can do more than punch cards can, but it's also harder to learn. So you can put in more effort and get more out, e.g. you might need 130% of the knowledge, but you get 150% of the result. These new generative AI algorithms make things easier, but they produce worse results. E.g. you can put in 50% of the effort and get 80% of the result. By lowering the amount of knowledge…

Excel is harder to learn than 1970s-era Fortran?

Excel is actually a good comparison. It's easy to learn, it works just fine for small stuff, it's easy to misuse, it's hard to catch mistakes, and more often than not at a certain point the grown-ups have to take over and rewrite the project using actually working technology.

> the ranks will be increased with unskilled labor and the profession will cease to be desirable knowledge work.

The real skill in software development has never been coding, but rather formally specifying problems and turning them into a complete set of instruction. If people could do that, we'd be all out of a job already. Java syntax isn't rocket science, folks...

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#52

Post by adventured »

There will be a lot more developers using AI to create software, and fewer software developers writing actual code (those that do will continue to be paid very well). Heavily using AI to create software will become a new layer of development that will broaden the field and a lot of tools will be built just for that purpose, to simplify and dumb it down. The developers not writing code will not be paid nearly so well. To get a job using AI to create software (but not writing code) will require a degree and it'll pay sub six figures most commonly.

A large share of developers making six figures today, that are in the middle ~15-25% group (in terms of skill), will often not be good enough to cut it in the future as the field narrows for writing code, the gravy train for the median and below will end and the pay will drop below six figures (in today's dollar). The entire bottom 1/3 or more of the code writing software field (people which are earning $75k-$85k+ today in the US) will largely be obliterated.

There are around 1.1-1.2 million software developers in the US today, earning roughly a median of $110k-$115k before benefits. Until recent developments, those people were almost all writing code directly (with some standard copy-pasting from Stack of course). At least half of those jobs are going away and quickly. Most will transition over to creating software using AI, but rarely or never writing code directly, as few people write machine code today. AI will similarly propogate a new layer, with fewer writing code directly (and that field may perpetually shrink for decades as it gets squeezed ever tighter by ever better AI approaches).

The number of people directly writing code has or is close to peaking. This is the end of that era.

People in the emerging software world (eg parts of Eastern Europe or Latin America, etc) will have a potent economic ladder largely pulled away from them (this part sucks big time, but nothing can stop what's coming). The opportunities to use AI to create software will still be there for those people (it won't pay nearly as well as writing code does today); it'll become a lot more rare for rich corporations to pay well to write code directly off-shore and the job numbers will dwindle substantially.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#53

Post by chefandy »

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'm no economist, but I think these arguments conflate the financial well-being of an industry with that of its workers. Automation increases any given industry's financial well-being but it's not evenly distributed.

Many software developers seem so accustomed to a disproportionately high labor value that they: a) incorrectly assume they can easily pivot their capability into something else, and b) have entirely lost touch with the realities of most labor markets. Even if its not tomorrow, I think this is going to be a rude awakening for many people in software.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#55

Post by Bukhmanizer »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #16

I am believing that, too. Just imagine this: Take a Laptop with WinXP+Office 98 from the 2000 era and travel back in time to the 60s or 70s using a time machine. Show the power of Excel to any of those developers punching holes into a punch card, feeding room-sized "computers". Tell them that this "Excel" tool is used by business and sales people without any programming skills. Those developers would clearly tell the…

I agree, with the caveat that the biggest danger that I see is that big corps are able to use the threat of AI to cow workers into accepting worse pay/treatment.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#56

Post by jstx1 »

sangnoir wrote: post #27
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.

Maybe but only if you're imagining completely new and inexperienced people who wouldn't be able to get anything done without AI entering the field - I can see how that can cause an emotional reaction.

But if you compare two experienced developers - one of them uses AI, the other doesn't - I don't see what's there to be reviled, one of them just found a tool that makes them more productive.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#57

Post by jszymborski »

yamazakiwi wrote: post #33
jszymborski wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI can reduce the barriers between languages and cultural customs as well. Languages, maybe, but cultural customs? I highly doubt that. Perhaps the perfunctory sort (e.g.: "vous"-ing and "usted"-ing), but there are real differences between cultures in both the work place and and personally that AI can't help you with. Nothing but compassion and a willingness to learn will help you with that one.

It won't remove ALL barriers obviously, but AI can explain quirks, significance, reference, and cultural trends in speech. An AI can dive deep to further comprehension, which will facilitate more cultural understanding through linguistic relativity.

I'm sorry, but I'm really not seeing anything here you can't get from a quick web search. LLMs are not a panacea, and there's no way for them to mainline a Comparative Cultures class into you in 5 minutes.

There really is no shortcut to compassion and understanding... so much of it is simply taking the time to inform yourself.

You can get an LLM to summarize a wiki page on some culture's customs, but there is better content written, edited, and curated by humans on the topic.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#58

Post by hnthrowaway0328 »

switchbak wrote: post #42
hnthrowaway0328 wrote: post #10

Sure, 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.

What's your argument? Why will they get fucked over?

I mean bro read some history.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#59

Post by jsunderland323 »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #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.

It’s not like the FANG dev lives in a separate universe devoid of the same AI developments as everyone else. If anything I’d imagine the barrier to producing the FANG products of today goes down but the interview process of FANG is still mostly on a curve relative to whatever technology is available at the time. I sort of expect their operating expenses to drop with more AI development, meaning a FANG job becomes more coveted since less employees are required to produce same revenues but you would expect the wages of those fewer employees to increase, no?

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#60

Post by adventured »

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…

There may be more overall developers - they won't be writing code directly. There will be fewer people writing code directly.

They'll be using tools that utilize AI to build software. The AI will be writing the code. In the future there will be a lot more jobs watching and assisting and using robots in factories as well. The net count of factory workers will be lower than whatever the peak was (whether we're referring to the peak in eg the US or China).

This is how corporations will boost margins even further in the tech field. AI writing code will be considerably cheaper than what big tech has been paying (which isn't to say big tech will eliminate all of their code writing jobs, just a lot of them). Peak code writing employment has occurred in the US, the latest tech layoffs are the end of that era (and will be recognized as such in hindsight).

Software developer will typically no longer be understood to mean a person that writes code, the terms will change (and most likely that'll happen this decade). Only older developers will still think of it in those terms.

Oh, you mean, like, you write the code directly? Dude, what century are you from?

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