Ask HN: AI impact on future developer career

#1

Post by alismayilov » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 10:14 PM UTC

My friend (who is not in technical field) was asking me if it is good idea that his son chooses a software development career.

If he asked me this question two years ago, I could definitely say that there will be always opportunities for him. Now it looks like it is not that easy to answer this question. We see that the coding performance of LLMs are getting better and better.

If your non-technical friend asks you and what would you suggest?

Do you see in your circle that the demand for junior developers are decreasing?

Re: Ask HN: AI impact on future developer career

#2

Post by tobinfekkes » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 10:21 PM UTC

While LLMs can appear to write code, they can not execute, maintain, or design the systems that use this code.

The actual "code" was never the hard part to begin with.

Developing software is not going away soon. LLMs only addresses a small part of what it means to develop software.

Re: Ask HN: AI impact on future developer career

#3

Post by alismayilov » Sat, Jun 22, 2024, 10:34 PM UTC

tobinfekkes wrote: post #2

While LLMs can appear to write code, they can not execute, maintain, or design the systems that use this code. The actual "code" was never the hard part to begin with. Developing software is not going away soon. LLMs only addresses a small part of what it means to develop software.

If we think about the demand and supply of the market, since developers will spend less time writing code, they will have more time to solve other parts of a project. This overall increase in productivity could eventually decrease the number of developers needed. In the past, if a project needed five developers, it could eventually be done by two developers. Hence, the market will need less developers than before.

Re: Ask HN: AI impact on future developer career

#4

Post by meiraleal » Sun, Jun 23, 2024, 12:31 AM UTC

> Do you see in your circle that the demand for junior developers are decreasing?

I expect the demand for junior developers to increase exponentially in the next years when the market adapts to the new AI tools as more than ever, every business will be a tech business.

Re: Ask HN: AI impact on future developer career

#5

Post by meiraleal » Sun, Jun 23, 2024, 12:32 AM UTC

alismayilov wrote: post #3

tobinfekkes wrote: post #2

While LLMs can appear to write code, they can not execute, maintain, or design the systems that use this code. The actual "code" was never the hard part to begin with. Developing software is not going away soon. LLMs only addresses a small part of what it means to develop software.

If we think about the demand and supply of the market, since developers will spend less time writing code, they will have more time to solve other parts of a project. This overall increase in productivity could eventually decrease the number of developers needed. In the past, if a project needed five developers, it could eventually be done by two developers. Hence, the market will need less developers than before.

the need for less developers will actually increase the demand because it will be easier for smaller companies or business not related to tech to have a software department.

Re: Ask HN: AI impact on future developer career

#6

Post by b20000 » Sun, Jun 23, 2024, 1:57 AM UTC

alismayilov wrote: post #3

tobinfekkes wrote: post #2

While LLMs can appear to write code, they can not execute, maintain, or design the systems that use this code. The actual "code" was never the hard part to begin with. Developing software is not going away soon. LLMs only addresses a small part of what it means to develop software.

If we think about the demand and supply of the market, since developers will spend less time writing code, they will have more time to solve other parts of a project. This overall increase in productivity could eventually decrease the number of developers needed. In the past, if a project needed five developers, it could eventually be done by two developers. Hence, the market will need less developers than before.

the cost of fixing and maintaining the AI generated code will turn out to be enormous and a lot of code will need to be thrown away and re-written from scratch by experienced developers

Re: Ask HN: AI impact on future developer career

#7

Post by p1esk » Sun, Jun 23, 2024, 2:16 AM UTC

I don’t know anyone who’s looking for junior devs today. That was not the case 3 years ago.

Re LLMs: most people responding here seem to assume there will be zero progress in ML after today. I don’t understand why. It’s likely we will get gpt-5 later this year, followed by Opus 3.5 and Ultra 1.5. I expect all three to be significantly better at coding than current models. Again, all three are expected within the next 6 months. Next gen after that (gpt-6 level): 2025-2026. Again, I don’t see any reasons not to expect further improvements. At that point (2026 at the latest) it will be strange to pay humans to write code, at least in the typical way we view SWE role today.

Re: Ask HN: AI impact on future developer career

#8

Post by b20000 » Sun, Jun 23, 2024, 4:38 AM UTC

p1esk wrote: post #7

I don’t know anyone who’s looking for junior devs today. That was not the case 3 years ago. Re LLMs: most people responding here seem to assume there will be zero progress in ML after today. I don’t understand why. It’s likely we will get gpt-5 later this year, followed by Opus 3.5 and Ultra 1.5. I expect all three to be significantly better at coding than current models. Again, all three are expected within the next…

define “better at coding” and also estimate cost of fixing generated solutions

Re: Ask HN: AI impact on future developer career

#9

Post by alismayilov » Sun, Jun 23, 2024, 6:33 AM UTC

b20000 wrote: post #6

alismayilov wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we think about the demand and supply of the market, since developers will spend less time writing code, they will have more time to solve other parts of a project. This overall increase in productivity could eventually decrease the number of developers needed. In the past, if a project needed five developers, it could eventually be done by two developers. Hence, the market will need less developers than before.

the cost of fixing and maintaining the AI generated code will turn out to be enormous and a lot of code will need to be thrown away and re-written from scratch by experienced developers

But maybe the quality of the code will be very good in the long run. Why do you think that developer will write better code than LLMs in the long run?

Re: Ask HN: AI impact on future developer career

#10

Post by ghoshbishakh » Sun, Jun 23, 2024, 7:02 AM UTC

All my devs who try to use ChatGPT or similar tools end up wasting more time that those who just jump into the code and try to work everything out themselves. How long till this balance changes is not known to me.