[sacnoradhq]

You maybe prematurely optimizing. The technological singularity will be realized when algorithms develop new programming languages, new hardware description languages, and so forth. We're not quite there yet.

There is no universal answer or panacea tool. Evaluating which tool to use from the toolbox depends on a particular use and who else will be working with it. Being flexible and experimenting should, at a minimum, improve one's engineering instincts even if a particular approach fails.

There won't be many engineering jobs left once self-programming systems and AI become consolidated by megacorps. The remaining jobs will be the "janitors" and AI architects. We won't need or be able to use 27 million software developers, perhaps only 10-100k in 20 years.

PS: In the meantime, run a model that can maintain and refactor COBOL. ;) Or, specialize somewhat to what's hot right now without worrying too much about the distant future.

[jononor]

Basically all companies over a certain size will need software development capabilities, just to improve their internal processes. There are over 350'000 companies with over 250 employees. If they have just 3 full-time equivalents each, that is still 1M jobs. With increasing degree of automation in companies in general, the potential value created from software increases. Many industries are still in the start of their digital transformation, even if they started over 10 years ago. Even in modern economies, many business processes are largely ran based primarily on humans with pen and paper. Even with vastly better tooling, I do not think the job market for developer will go down in the next 20 years. We will just create more software, tackle more problems. And the role of the human will continuously evolve along with our tools.

[fxtentacle]

Another niche: Many banks in Europe still use M4, but the existing maintainers are growing old and retiring.

[jzwinck]

What do they use m4 for?

[benji-york]

m4 the macro language?

[fxtentacle]

Yes. I heard about it being used for email automation and reporting.

Unrelated talk about the M4 language that I'm referring to: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ULZxHSPWn98