Will AI reduce the need for software developers?

AdrianH

AdrianH

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More to get a discussion going than anything.

So being halfway through my career, my current goals are learning the new tech stacks, skills, languages, competencies, etc to stay relevant in the modern age of programming. Fortunately we do shorter projects for customers, so I get exposed to a lot of different tech stacks, languages , infrastructures often which is super. But I have also been thinking about what I should be looking towards with the emergence of AI and code generation.

I do think about how things changed over the last 25 odd years in software development, and all the times I have had to skill up over the years, how tech stacks 10 or 20 years ago is now redundant, how some skills and languages I have learned are obsolete, and how I have had to change from waterfall to agile, etc.

Now I am wondering what I should be looking at as a long term goal 10 to 20 years ahead so that I will still be able to develop software.

It's inevitable AI will take over some roles and functions from software developers, but I also don't believe they will make software developers redundant, well probably not while I am still working.

What's your thought fellow old programmers? What are you planning to do to ensure you are relevant in 10 to 20 years time?

I am also interested in hearing what some of the younger software developers think of the changes, and how they think it will affect their careers as you have to stay relevant for even longer.

PS: I don't want to change careers, I want to write code until I retire.
 
No it will not. These code generators are just tools that can make the life of a software developer a little better. They won't get rid of software developers just like the advent of calculators and computers didn't get rid of mathematicians. Just like all the freely available information and knowledge on the internet didn't get rid of universities and teachers.

I personally use them to help me write the smaller parts of my code that I can't be bothered to cram. This would be for example the regex code to check if values entered in a form are alphanumeric for example. I don't know the regex patterns by head.

Remember, software development isn't just writing code. In the past 3 months of my work, I just started writing code yesterday. The past weeks of the start of the project was getting the project requirements outlined, then getting designs that can actually be implemented in code, then setting up GitHub, CI/CD workflows etc.
There isn't AI that can do any of that in a reasonable manner with all the back and forth needed.

Finally, even if managers try to use AI to get the code written, it will be such a broken mess it will backfire.

I'm 33 going on 34. I'm deeply concerned that ageism is about to hit me. I'm already one of the older ones in our team. I doubt I'll be able to code till retirement. I'm thinking I'll have to adjust my career a little bit in my 40s.
 
10 years - Large portion of code generated from AI - Manual tweaks still required
20 years - All code generated from AI - Self-testing and bug fixed baked in. The birth of real AGI

This post will age like fine wine
 
From what I've seen it has increased efficiency and output so yes you would require less developers for the same job.

Its really good at the repetitive work. Give it a sample set of code and then the requirements definition for a set of forms or unit tests etc and it spits out the results. It can also be pretty good at spotting issues with code during debugging so quicker resolution time. All in all it has had a pretty big impact already.

Its also really good at defining requirements whether agile or waterfall.
 
zimspy said:
I'm 33 going on 34. I'm deeply concerned that ageism is about to hit me. I'm already one of the older ones in our team. I doubt I'll be able to code till retirement. I'm thinking I'll have to adjust my career a little bit in my 40s.
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Most of the devs in my company are in their late 40’s early 50’s. Previous companies we had a guy in his 70’s. I’ve never really seen age to be an issue personally.
 
I just hope I don't get more work with this.

Varsity pisser degree developer : "The AI says I need to change my code in this way but it breaks the logic, you are IT, how should the code be done?"
 
I think AI will for at least the next 10 years just be used as a much more advanced google search and code completion tool. I use it like I would use stack overflow. You do kind of need to know what you want and understand code for the AI responses to actually make sense.

As for what am I doing for my future as a dev. Well, I'm trying to stick to a language these days that are used by bigger corporates a lot and that ages very well and are being updated constantly. In this case Java. But, I also do not just write everything using pure java. You have frameworks like spring that very much helps you build better and faster and takes care of a lot of "work" for you. So yeah, I kind of chose a language and framework that is widely used for enterprise development that will(hopefully) be updated as the years pass. Trying to move away from being a jack of all trades and master of none to an expert at something.

As for age, not an issue in corporates. I worked for a dev house before and the age of developers there was much younger than the corporates I have worked at.
 
My_King said:
I just hope I don't get more work with this.

Varsity pisser degree developer : "The AI says I need to change my code in this way but it breaks the logic, you are IT, how should the code be done?"
Click to expand...
What are you even trying to say here? You seem pretty insecure about someone with a degree.
 
BBSA said:
AI can make developers more productive, so you need fewer of them.
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Plus isn’t the ability of AI to learn a big factor? Also it keeps on improving. I think it will (replace). In the next few decades.
 
AdrianH said:
Now I am wondering what I should be looking at as a long term goal 10 to 20 years ahead so that I will still be able to develop software.
Click to expand...
The difficult stuff - the easier things (starting with front end web dev), will be eaten away by AI and better tooling. Within whatever field you are in, there should be a sense of what things are harder to do (usually, also the things that pay the most, not coincidentally) - I suggest following that.

AdrianH said:
It's inevitable AI will take over some roles and functions from software developers, but I also don't believe they will make software developers redundant, well probably not while I am still working.

What's your thought fellow old programmers? What are you planning to do to ensure you are relevant in 10 to 20 years time?
Click to expand...
I'm almost 50 now, so it's not really going to affect me, but I continue to stay on the cutting edge of hardware/AI/software-engineering, etc., and at this point I have a track record of delivering big projects, which I think involves enough technical and human nuance, that it's not going to be replicated until we hit AGI.

zimspy said:
No it will not. These code generators are just tools that can make the life of a software developer a little better. They won't get rid of software developers just like the advent of calculators and computers didn't get rid of mathematicians. Just like all the freely available information and knowledge on the internet didn't get rid of universities and teachers.
Click to expand...
They've definitely reduced demand significantly for certain types of developers, and even more drastically, certain types of artists.
zimspy said:
I'm 33 going on 34. I'm deeply concerned that ageism is about to hit me. I'm already one of the older ones in our team. I doubt I'll be able to code till retirement. I'm thinking I'll have to adjust my career a little bit in my 40s.
Click to expand...
It depends on what you do - if your skills are in demand ageism won't matter. If younger people can do what you do for less, it will - make sure that you grow your skill set and role.

PPLdude said:
10 years - Large portion of code generated from AI - Manual tweaks still required
20 years - All code generated from AI - Self-testing and bug fixed baked in. The birth of real AGI

This post will age like fine wine
Click to expand...
AGI would be a game changer, but it's not a definite - it may not be achievable due to physical constraints (transistor size, power, etc.).
 
As a logic based task, I would think that AI will definitely reduce the need for developers,significantly.

Don't rule out advances in quantum computing either, it will become a force to be reckoned with, in time.

As to the point of teachers and universities not becoming obsolete yet, imo it's only because we have yet to come to terms with reality. People are doing what they've always done, largely because it was the only way. That's no more the case. Everything will change.
 
cguy said:
AGI would be a game changer, but it's not a definite - it may not be achievable due to physical constraints (transistor size, power, etc.).
Click to expand...
At least we've seen the mean transistor size decrease year on year

If this is enough based on Moore's Law, is yet to play out

I just hope if/when we reach AGI, it's a "growth" phase of civilization rather than
 
semaphore said:
Most of the devs in my company are in their late 40’s early 50’s. Previous companies we had a guy in his 70’s. I’ve never really seen age to be an issue personally.
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Good developers (or people doing anything they're interested in) keep learning and improving the whole time.

Age only becomes an issue when you stop exercising your brain, ignoring of course health related things that you have no control over.
 
PPLdude said:
At least we've seen the mean transistor size decrease year on year

If this is enough based on Moore's Law, is yet to play out
Click to expand...
www.tomshardware.com

Intel's CEO says Moore's Law is slowing to a three-year cadence, but it's not dead yet

Moore's Law is complicated.
www.tomshardware.com www.tomshardware.com

It’s already slowing down as we press physical limits, and the cost for new fabs for the new technologies are growing significantly too.

physicsworld.com

Moore’s law: further progress will push hard on the boundaries of physics and economics – Physics World

James McKenzie pays tribute to the foresight of Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel who died earlier this year
physicsworld.com

We already hit a clock wall, and a power wall, and we will soon hit a transistor wall.

PPLdude said:
I just hope if/when we reach AGI, it's a "growth" phase of civilization rather than
Click to expand...
 
AI are not human! Watching all these movies like iRobot and the like - we as developers know that there will never be a replacement for the human psyche/intelligence.

Yes it is scary to know that robots (or rather put: mechanical labour) does take away human jobs, but we are a far away from AI thinking and producing without the human mind helping/steering it's train of thought.
 
BBSA said:
AI can make developers more productive, so you need fewer of them.
Click to expand...

Yes, but also possibly not.

Devs are more productive with C# .Net than with Visual C++, with Angular and React vs vanilla JS and HTML etc.
Yet we have more devs than ever, and I don't think the need for developers will decrease, but the tools we use and the type of work we do, will. Hopefully it will also reduce delivery times, but I doubt we'll see a time where there are just no more feature requests any time soon.

With regards to tools like copilot, a small percentage of a dev's job is actually spent typing out code.
 
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