[ElProlactin]

> Well, I guess where we're not lining up is I don't see that you are going to deliver a serious application that isn't the equivalent of table knocked together in a home workshop without, in practice, "learning how to program."

My argument is that AI is now "good enough" that there are real people who are smart and tech-savvy but who don't know how to program who are building real applications, shipping them and using them commercially.

By any reasonable standard, these people haven't "learned how to program." They've learned how to use a tool that can program for them, troubleshoot for them, give them clear, step-by-step instructions on how to deploy to numerous services that have made it possible for non-developers to deploy, etc.

> Sure, but I can do more stuff faster with AI, which they also value enough to pay for the tools. Is that a serious question? You will find few professional software developers whose employers aren't encouraging AI tool use today.

But you stated previously:

> I also disagree with the “democratization” frame because now developers are spending like $1000 per month on tokens at their jobs, which does the opposite of making things more accessible.

So who is paying for the tokens? You or your employer? If your employer is paying for them, what's the problem?

> I don't really agree with the idea that all the barriers are gone and everyone's ready to deliver commercial-grade software without understanding what they're doing. If you think that's the case, then you'll have to conclude most businesses are acting highly irrationally by continuing to pay high wages to employ people with specialized knowledge of software development to operate AI tools rather than just handing it over to your new breed of semiskilled laborers who don't need to know how to program.

I never argued that all barriers are gone and that every idiot can deliver "commercial-grade" software. What I've argued, again, is that AI has for a growing number of smart non-developers improved to the point where it offers a third path separate from learning-to-program or hiring a developer.

As for what businesses are doing, the general trends speak for themselves. Companies are citing AI in layoffs. It's absolutely brutal right now for new grads and juniors who a decade ago were inundated with 6-figure offers. Lots of freelancers/contractors/agencies who could easily sell 5 and 6-figure projects or command $xxx/hour rates just a few years ago are finding it much harder to do so.

The market for highly-paid developers isn't going to 0 overnight but anyone who thinks it isn't going in a certain direction is in my opinion in denial.

[emodendroket]

OK, let me try putting this in a different way: you may be able to get away with not knowing syntax, but if you aim to deliver and support an application that people pay for, that wasn't the chief thing that was hard to learn about. The tools could improve to the point they deskill the work but today one must learn about enough concepts that, in practice, they're still "learning to program," much like people didn't stop needing to "learn to program" because C or garbage collection or IDEs or WYSIWIG UI editors came into fashion and made some kinds of knowledge less important.

> So who is paying for the tokens? You or your employer? If your employer is paying for them, what's the problem?

There is no problem but it's obviously not "democratizing" it to need to have an employer willing to pay thousands per month for AI tools. Now I'm wondering if you're the one being deliberately obtuse.

[ElProlactin]

> The tools could improve to the point they deskill the work but today one must learn about enough concepts that, in practice, they're still "learning to program,"...

Then we'll have to agree to disagree. There are people building, deploying and selling applications using AI who aren't doing anything close to what I would consider "programming". This is so far beyond the comparison to an IDE or WYSIWYG editor.

> There is no problem but it's obviously not "democratizing" it to need to have an employer willing to pay thousands per month for AI tools.

Why does your employer need to be willing to pay thousands per month for AI tools if you don't need AI to do your job? Can't you just tell your employer you don't need AI? If you use 0 tokens, don't they pay for 0 tokens? Or do you have an employer who is forcing you to use AI? How are you using it if you don't need it?

[emodendroket]

> Why does your employer need to be willing to pay thousands per month for AI tools if you don't need AI to do your job? Can't you just tell your employer you don't need AI? If you use 0 tokens, don't they pay for 0 tokens? Or do you have an employer who is forcing you to use AI? How are you using it if you don't need it?

An accountant could do his job without Excel, a developer when AI didn't exist could do his job without IntelliJ, a carpenter can use hand tools, and on and on and on. I don't really understand what you think you're revealing with this line of questioning. I can do the job more productively with the tools so they pay for the tools. If we're making appeals to rational behavior on employers' part, they did hire me, and at prevailing SWE wages, to do it, rather than getting someone who doesn't know how to program in any traditional sense, and then immediately encourage my use of the tools.

[ElProlactin]

> If we're making appeals to rational behavior on employers' part, they did hire me, and at prevailing SWE wages, to do it, rather than getting someone who doesn't know how to program in any traditional sense, and then immediately encourage my use of the tools.

Why would an employer hire a non-programmer for a programming job? Do you think that the only people who can use AI to build software are software developers?

Once again, the "democratization" comes from the fact that a growing number of smart people who aren't programmers and who by any reasonable definition haven't taught themselves how to program are now able to use AI to build and ship software products. They aren't recreating Salesforce in a weekend, and they're not coming to take your job, but the latest models are sufficiently good at creating polished (if still uniform looking) web applications with features including access controls, billing, etc. through prompting alone. So non-developers have a new path for creating software themselves without learning to program or hiring a programmer.

As for AI's impact on the labor market for developers, you either believe that a) the need for software will outpace the productivity gains you acknowledge at a significant enough pace so that the number of developers needed and the wages they can command will stay the same or increase or b) AI will reduce the number of developers needed and the wages they can command.

So which one is it? Well, when new grads that would have had multiple 6-figure offers a few years ago are struggling to get hired and you have big tech companies laying off hundreds of thousands of people with CEOs like Zuckerberg making statements like "we're starting to see projects that used to require big teams being accomplished by a single talented person", it sure doesn't look like the former.

[emodendroket]

> So which one is it? Well, when new grads that would have had multiple 6-figure offers a few years ago are struggling to get hired and you have big tech companies laying off hundreds of thousands of people with CEOs like Zuckerberg making statements like "we're starting to see projects that used to require big teams being accomplished by a single talented person", it sure doesn't look like the former.

Well, that's your belief; I don't share your confidence (there were and are a lot of headwinds to hiring besides AI but AI is the most investor-friendly face to put on them). But it seems like a completely different discussion.

To the main point, I really don't think the fact that non-professionals can make software with AI is fundamentally different than the way, say, Access could slowly move you along the continuum from a user to a full-fledged developer. Yes, someone can do more things, faster, but in essence, it's the same thing. But this conversation is frankly really circular and unsatisfying. You have your thing you want to believe, and you have the spiteful edge you want to put on it. That's fine.