[DrewADesign]

Yeah. I’ve been saying that for a while (and switched fields entirely.) People were getting hung up on the idea that an LLM could not truly replace a developer, and that’s true, but it doesn’t matter. For the job market to be severely impacted, you just need to reduce the number of people required to do the parts of the job that LLMs suck at, and that only requires increased efficiency for existing developers. Even if your average developer is a measly 30% more efficient, that might create 20% less demand for developers, which would have a giant impact on demand, which would have a giant impact on wages for those still employed.

[swsieber]

> Even if your average developer is a measly 30% more efficient, that might create 20% less demand for developers

I mean it might. But I wouldn't rule out Jevon's paradox where the increased efficiency increases demand.

Build more roads, congestion gets worse. Make developers more efficient, demand for developers increases. I wouldn't be surprised if demand for bespoke software goes up.

[stackbutterflow]

I see it go in either two directions, assuming it plateaus at a marginal increase in productivity. Either this newly found productivity helps teams tackle backlog tasks that they never had the time to complete, or it's used to churn out more low quality work.

[DrewADesign]

We can get a preview of it all in the media creation world. Slop slop slop.

[Wowfunhappy]

Did Object Oriented programming create less demand for developers?

[DrewADesign]

Were the software and dev markets even remotely comparable in the 60s?

[zeroonetwothree]

How much more efficient did compilers make developers?

[DrewADesign]

Yeah that’s exactly the same if you completely ignore context and market dynamics. It’s like trying to use the patterns of the colonial American horse market as a vehicle to analyze the modern American auto industry.

[alightsoul]

a ton. that's why fortran was invented