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With AI looming, is there still space for new coders? (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/programming

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For some background, I originally wanted to break into programming back when I was in college but drifted more into desktop tech support and now systems administration. SysAdmin work is draining me, though, and I want to pick back up programming and see if I can make a career out of it, but industry seems like it could be moving in a direction to rely on AI for coding. Everything I've heard has said AI is not there yet, but if it's looking like it hits a point where it reaches an ability to fully automate coding, should I even bother? Am I going to be obsolete after a year? Five years?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Well, no. That’s just plain wrong. There is only a certain amount of demand for software, like for every other product or service. That’s literally economy 101.

But that demand isn't going anywhere. A company with good profits is always going to be willing to re-invest a percentage of those profits in better software. A new company starting out is always going to invest whatever amount of risk they can tolerate on brand new software written from scratch.

That money will not be spent on AI, because AI is practically free. It will always be spent on humans doing work to create software. Maybe the work looks a bit different as in "computer, make that button green" vs button.color = 'green' however it's still work that needs to be done and honestly it's not that big of an efficiency gain. It's certainly not as big as the jump we did decades ago from hole punch programming to typing code on a keyboard. That jump did not result in lay offs, we have far more programmers now than we did then.

If productivity improves, if anything that will mean more job opportunities. It lowers the barrier to entry allowing new projects that were not financially viable in the past.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yes there will always be demand for coders, but will there be enough demand for the current (increasing) supply? Right now the global number of software developers is growing by about a million per year (total is only 28.7 million) - this means that (very roughly) to keep salaries stable we also need demand for new software to be growing by about 3.5% per year. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but a decade from now you'll need 1.4 jobs for every job now to keep up with the supply.

In the past we had new dynamics to get end-users to spend more and more time using computers and hence software (desktop PCs, video games, internet, mobile phones, social media, etc.). At this point there's so little time left in a consumer's day that tech can grow into that I worry that any further advancements will have to cannibalize from another area; I.e. we've reached peak demand for software.