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AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

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Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#81

Post by lewdev »

jallen_dot_dev wrote: post #72
Beltiras wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the right comparison. Developers need to remember that nobody had a job punching holes in cards after the revolution of personal computing. Going to be the same here. The jobs will revolve around operating the new "loom" which we have been given.

It's not clear to me that the new "loom" won't just operate itself completely. That's the problem with comparing this to previous tech advances. Past advances made people much more efficient at some task, but it still required the people to work the new thing. But now we have a new thing that might be able to work itself.

The "loom" in this case is kind of a loom that helps people create other tools. Creating tools is generally not an automated task and with AI it will be easier.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#82

Post by epolanski »

kevingadd wrote: post #13
epolanski wrote: post #6

They said that AI would've disrupted the language translation industry, it actually helped it a ton.

It's been disrupted, though. A lot of translators are now being offered MTL editing work instead, which pays worse and produces lower quality (but takes less time).

That is not true, one of my closest friends has a translating agency, he often says the sector has boomed with stuff like google translate.

Essentially professional translations are now much more accessible to people that would've not been able to afford them in the first place. Yes, it pays less per page, depends on the type of translation actually, but it is also much faster to do and there's more business.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#83

Post by sangnoir »

adventured wrote: post #76
sangnoir wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers who'll use AI as a crutch will be no different to entry-level, PHP-only developers of yore who relied on StackOverflow and will be reviled for the same reason: their code will be buggy & inconsistent. I was an experienced polyglot developer and I occasionally used PHP for rapid prototyping, but the hate knew no nuance on HN and elsewhere.

It's not going to be a crutch. It's going to be a large segment of lower paid grunts, doing work that will be less difficult and more mind numbing. The requirements will still be modestly high, you'll need a degree, and you'll get paid less than today's software developers (in some cases far less). A software developer in the future will be someone who only interfaces with AI centric tools, with the AI writing essent…

We're talking about different time-frames. PHP is now a respectable language because the language and the ecosystem evolved to be much more capable, this somewhat raided the bar from earlier when new, self-taught developers could get by with copy-pasting functions from the internet.

AI tools assistance tools currently help with code-writing at function-level, which is analogous to copy-pasting PHP functions from SO. There are a lot of opportunities to shoot oneself in the foot with both. Without an understanding of the larger (sub)system, AI-generated code will have integration bugs and superfluous code. A good/experienced developer can use the same tooling and emd up with excellent code, but that won't stop the ecosystem from being tainted as awful.

With the growth in token sizes, AIs will be able to ingest/understand larger codebases and generate more consistent code, but that will happen over time, just as PHP got Laravel as well as base-language improvements.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#84

Post by kevingadd »

epolanski wrote: post #82
kevingadd wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been disrupted, though. A lot of translators are now being offered MTL editing work instead, which pays worse and produces lower quality (but takes less time).

That is not true, one of my closest friends has a translating agency, he often says the sector has boomed with stuff like google translate. Essentially professional translations are now much more accessible to people that would've not been able to afford them in the first place. Yes, it pays less per page, depends on the type of translation actually, but it is also much faster to do and there's more business.

You're talking about the POV of the owner of a translation agency, and how he's getting more business because he can charge less and deliver "translations" faster via MTL. I'm talking about the job market for translators. These are different things.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#86

Post by vannevar »

chefandy wrote: post #53
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…

Yes, this is the point I was making about developers not getting much of a share of the increased profits from the productivity boost. That's been the story for workers (at least in the US) since the 70s.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#87

Post by chefandy »

vannevar wrote: post #86
chefandy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, this is the point I was making about developers not getting much of a share of the increased profits from the productivity boost. That's been the story for workers (at least in the US) since the 70s.

Yeah. Tech optimists of late smack of their .com bust era counterparts clinging to early net utopianism and ignoring history and empirical evidence. The popular platitude "the rules have changed" wasn't a lie– they were just wrong about which rules changed.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#88

Post by soco »

xnx wrote: post #67
soco wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The middle class, which they (used to) represent, has lost lots and lots of buying power since then. So do they have jobs? Yes. Are they worse off? Also yes.

> Are they worse off? Also yes. There's no time in human history that I'd rather live in than the present day.

"on my computer it works"

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#89

Post by epolanski »

kevingadd wrote: post #84
epolanski wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not true, one of my closest friends has a translating agency, he often says the sector has boomed with stuff like google translate. Essentially professional translations are now much more accessible to people that would've not been able to afford them in the first place. Yes, it pays less per page, depends on the type of translation actually, but it is also much faster to do and there's more business.

You're talking about the POV of the owner of a translation agency, and how he's getting more business because he can charge less and deliver "translations" faster via MTL. I'm talking about the job market for translators. These are different things.

Yes, they have much more work now, that is the point.

Does it pays less on per page basis? It mostly does (but it highly depends on the type of translations: legal, medical, etc have the same fees) but it is more than compensated by being able to churn much more work by focusing on reviewing and interpreting the author's meaning and context.

Re: AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

#90

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

jsunderland323 wrote: post #59
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 mor…

yes but i don't think those will be dev jobs. it will either be a much broader, complex job title, requiring much more responsibilities - or it will just be some kind of non meritocratic type of job that isn't reasonably open to everyone...
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