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by 000ooo000 878 days ago
I don't think that software development as a profession will cease to exist for a long while, but I do think that in a decade or so, it will look very different to development today, and it won't be an improvement (from the perspective of a developer who likes writing software).

Based on my own feelings toward the profession which I see echoed around in online and offline discussions, there's often many undesirable elements of this career giving low overall job satisfaction, and I can only see increased AI presence making it worse. So at some point the good won't outweigh the bad, like one might argue it does now, and there'll be a bit of an exodus from the field, leaving few but well paid developers who either enjoy or tolerate AI's involvement. All just my own speculation, but that's the nature of the question.

1 comments

Also to expand on my comment above, I spent a few years working in schools and I was surprised to see a trend I had noticed prior was reflected in the students: the tech skills don't seem to be as prevalent as in prior generations. My very casual theory is that the transition in UI's over the years from powerful and flexible to dumb and barely configurable, has led to fewer kids exploring software and getting a knack for (and confidence in) tinkering. Again, I don't think AI will improve this long term, so it will be interesting to see what new developers are like in 20 years if it's safe to assume that many devs have this background of 'software curiosity' if I can call it that.

And before someone well ackshually's me: yes I recognise that this technology progression isn't unique to software.