16 Comments

Not to be "that guy," but tech is gonna need a lot of English majors as well, if only to create an app that correctly changes the misuse of "less" to "fewer." 😀 But seriously, as an English major who learned to code a very long time ago because nobody would pay a dude to go around changing their less to fewer — and legit got mad when I did — I agree that some things could do well with less friction AND some things that got technized that really shouldn't have been need the reverse treatment.

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Thank you! I came to say the same. "Less" is volume; "fewer" is quantity. Nice sentiment though. There are indeed non-stop annoyances in every day life that could be dramatically improved with good software. I'm not sure that AI will solve the profit motive but maybe there will be an explosion of solo apps. Hell, maybe AI can help me finally finish my mobile app idea. :-p

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Haha always appreciate grammar check from readers. Check out Replit, they have great beginner level programming courses, now AI-powered, that might just be what you need to finish that app!

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Great grammar call out! My former political communications brain automatically defaults to better sounding headlines, at the expense of proper grammar, and for that I sincerely apologize 😅

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I agree with the conclusion but reach it a different way.

Human beings by nature, connect with and will always want things which are not automated. Think handmade vs machine made handbags, suits. This also applies to work like newspaper articles etc.

So the minute something becomes automated it stops becoming desirable and we demand something else. Then your developer will come along and try to automate that something else until he succeeds, then it’s value disappears and we will move onto the next thing.

And until it becomes possible to automate every object of desire there will always be opportunities for developers.

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Agree with your conclusion of more products / smaller teams. Just from my short-term experience with using GPT-4 to brainstorm ideas for creative projects and also write code, I feel less like a software engineer and more like a combination of a product manager and tech lead.

I still have to provide plenty of guidance and correct errors when they arise, but there's an undeniable efficiency boost.

My gut feeling is that larger companies will invest more in either building their own ChatGPT/Copilot-type LLM products or leveraging third-party solutions, and use these to improve overall efficiency while also reducing headcount.

(I may or may not be thinking about a certain high-profile company that's both investing heavily in AI and also aggressively downsizing, although the two trends may not be related yet 🙃)

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"AI-enabled programming will unleash the biggest wave of technology creation yet, not for the sake of creating, but because, if we just look around us, there is so much that technology has not yet touched but should. "

I think this is the heart of the matter.

Some fearmongers are acting like work that needs to be done will cease to exist all of a sudden.

Maybe work at the current level of abstraction and granularity will cease to exist, thus allowing us to be more productive, creative and encounter new challenges that we can't even fathom yet.

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Nice perspective.

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I am of the opinion that we are just on the verge of a revolution in analyzing human texts that will be at least as interesting as client-server and cloud computing. Essentially we are entering a realm where a new kind of data analysis is possible. It will make for a revolution in academia rather like the introduction of Unix to Wall Street did to finance.

There will be more jobs, but the dynamism will in the blend of skills required for professions we already know. This is also going to change the balance of attending to data rather than to code. Data creation and curation will become more lucrative than software engineering.

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Oh thanks but I've actually been a software engineer for close to 20 years. I just ran into annoyances and frustrations when working on a React Native app for myself and gradually put less and less time into it. Kept meaning to get back to it. Maybe with AI's assistance, I can churn that piece out and style it too!

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Ah I see then never mind :) AI apps have been great for debugging, writing tests, and solving error messages too! Good luck

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Brilliant, positive perspective. I'm excited to see all the problems we can solve, I hope to contribute a small part.

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. . NOT FEWER .. ):) . . ..ai will bring better health care to all humans, eventually. if wethepeople do it with rational aforethought, ai will put paid to internet trolls and scammers and thieves and such. end internet anonymity!

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"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.”

The answer is 0

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AI will create & allows millions of dumb as shit programmers, that will be incapable of debugging their AI generated code;

So yes, if you can debug complex systems generated by AI, then you will be paid in GOLD

On the other hand as already with open-ai chat-GPT they hired $2/hr programmers in Africa to write the filter, which was just to make the AI 'woke'

The trend is to hire idiots with no theory or knowledge to generate code, but nobody of course will test the code, or debug it, and that I agree generating billions of lines of shitty code will require millions of educated CS people to make any of it operational in the 'real world'

That is the entire problem with 'woke' is that they & open-ai are not part of the real-world, like META @ FaceFuck they're trying to re-imagine their own HOMO-CUCK world where everybody wants to be fucked in the ass by global-homo's

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