Do you believe that GPT-4 will significantly reduce the demand for coders? If not, why not? I am curious to get your sense of this. I am not a professional coder. I write code for scientific work. But I am really curious.
Coding Jobs and GPT-4
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Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4
#2The question I ask myself: Is there a large and still-unmet demand for software engineering worldwide. AKA is the market supply-constrained by a large-enough amount?
If so, I imagine engineers will be more productive with AI (and wages will go down, or at least stop growing somewhat), but the demand for software engineers will stay strong.
If not, then engineers being more productive would mean fewer engineers can meet the global demand for software engineering work and I would expect to see the demand for software engineers reduced.
Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4
#3Large language models will change the way we write code, but not make code disappear. We will always need code to execute software.
But we don't use punched cards anymore. We don't write low level machine code anymore, unless we must or we are into that. We don't have to use complex and difficult programming languages when we can do the same in a few lines of Python that abstract everything. And now we don't have to write most of the high level code as we can have a loose conversation with the machine.
I'm expecting that the demand for good coders will stay high, to use these new AIs, fix the bugs, check the outputs, and build much more ambitious projects.
However the demand for cheap coders that write simple applications will disappear and be replaced by machines. The humans will do other activities instead, in software development or not.
Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4
#4The question I ask myself: Is there a large and still-unmet demand for software engineering worldwide. AKA is the market supply-constrained by a large-enough amount? If so, I imagine engineers will be more productive with AI (and wages will go down, or at least stop growing somewhat), but the demand for software engineers will stay strong. If not, then engineers being more productive would mean fewer engineers can me…
Development has gotten much faster since the 2000s: better languages, better IDEs, better libraries, better design practices, better documentation, better online resources, better (faster, less buggy) target platforms. I remember when I was first writing code in the early 2010s writing Objective-C in Xcode 3 with manual memory management. Developer productivity has exploded more than most people realize.
And yet developers have always been in demand. We just have a lot more programs now, and a lot of very-similar and/or niche programs. All the random libraries on npm, Rust, Haskell, etc. the various crypto-currencies, static/dynamic webpage builders, 3 separate JavaScript runtimes. People start businesses and actually get funding for these libraries. And it seems like a lot of companies want almost the exact same product, some "business solution" or "cloud solution", but they have specific reasons existing solutions aren't acceptable (performance? security? some feature?), so they pay $200k+ salaries for developers to build them.
But will this always be the case? Even ignoring GPT4, we don't really need these developers who are working on niche and similar projects; we are having a harder time getting hired right now with the economic downturn. And still, it's entirely possible this growth has a limit, and GPT4 will make developers turn ideas into working products faster than people can come up with them.
Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4
#5Are there fewer engineers since AutoCAD was invented and they didn't need to draw everything out by hand? Yes, but not by much and they just have much higher expectations.
I feel like this is more programmers realizing they have to become the 10x they were told was a myth to survive. Which is kinda true! BUT what also is true using AI tools will make them that if they learn to use them, now they need to know security inside and out, systems design etc. Higher level concepts way above a code monkey's pay grade, now will be expectations, all the theory side is going to be much more important.
Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4
#6Demand for coders like React monkeys and java bloats, yes. Demand for actual software engineers with a strong penchant for system design, no.
Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4
#7It's a strange question. That "professional coder" term is such a misconception... i mean does anyone know of any experienced dev that consider themselves a coder?
Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4
#8Personally, I think no-code tools are much more of an existential threat than LLMs. Or rather, they should be. Instead, despite the prevalence of tools that seek to democratize software authorship, the demand for software engineers has yet to abate.
As for why, my best theory is that writing code isn’t the hard part, but in fact one of the easier parts of the job, much like how drafting isn’t really the hard part when it comes to engineering or architecture.
Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4
#9Writing code is one thing, owning it and having responsibility is another. But can we build tooling for this to on top of LLMs too? This won't happen overnight but it will certainly happen gradually, I don't see why not. By owning it, I mean, upgrading libraries, fixing bugs, writing tests, running tests, fixing tests, and maybe even adding features.
It's totally possible to make LLMs write actually good code that can be maintained using normal software engineering practices.
Of course there will still be a need for a human touch, such as knowing limitations of LLMs and possible workarounds and understanding business requirements. Such productivity boost may even create more jobs as products will become cheaper and faster to create, hence more new markets will be explored. The pie might also get bigger not smaller.
Re: Coding Jobs and GPT-4
#10Demand for coders like React monkeys and java bloats, yes. Demand for actual software engineers with a strong penchant for system design, no.
i might be wrong but i disagree with a lot of commenter's saying how they are not hiring juniors anymore or their seniors are 10x more productive even if they are just boilerplate programmers they are still more useful than tools like gpt and always will be (my opinion) my guess is that instead of juniors they will be called coding assistants.