AI isn't going to kill the software industry
https://dustinewers.com/ignore-the-grifters/"AI tools create a significant productivity boost for developers. Different folks report different gains, but most people who try AI code generation recognize its ability to increase velocity. Many people think that means we’re going to need fewer developers, and our industry is going to slowly circle the drain.
This view is based on a misunderstanding of why people pay for software. A business creates software because they think that it will give them some sort of economic advantage. The investment needs to pay for itself with interest. There are many software projects that would help a business, but businesses aren’t going to do them because the return on investment doesn’t make sense.
When software development becomes more efficient, the ROI of any given software project increases, which unlocks more projects. [...] Cheaper software means people are going to want more of it. More software means more jobs for increasingly efficient software developers."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
edit: whoops that's the point of the original article
This assumes software developers will be the ones needed to meet the demand. I think it will be more like technical product managers
Whatever juice there is to squeeze out of generative AI coding, the people who will squeeze the most from it in the near future (10-20 years) are current and incoming software developers. Some may adopt different titles as the role matures, especially if there's a pay differential. This already happened with data engineering, database administration, etc
So it's possible that the absolute number of people carrying the title approximately like "software developer" may be fewer in 10 years than it is today, although I personally find that very unlikely. But the people leading and maturing whatever alternate path comes up, for the next generation or so, will more often than not have a professional or academic background in software development regardless.
The whole point of the article is that generative AI represents a lever that amplifies the capabilities of people who best know how to apply it. And for software development, that's ultimately going to be software developers.
Even with traditional software development you'll be a much more effective software developer with good product management skills in a lot of niches (basically anything that's building a something user-facing)
All this is fine but then they take this to the extreme by laying off developers when there are no more ROI projects. Then bit rot sets in, systems degrade, customers abandon ship, and suddenly there are no engineers to help the business. And no, hiring contractors last minute doesn't cut it because they don't know what pile of gunk has been running and what caused the degradation.
Software requires maintenance, much like a bespoke car. For every bespoke car you produce, you need to continuously service it with bespoke skills else it will stop working - and cause your revenue to drop.
I imagine there is an upper bound on how much of the world can be eaten by software, and the trend seems to be getting closer to that point. Unless there are some massive breakthroughs in robotics or cybernetics which open more of the physical world to software.
There's also a point where incremental software improvement requires bulldozing, paving, or burning so much nature that we'll be worse off in the end. Watching billionaires squabble about who gets the new AI data centers makes me wonder if we haven't crossed over that point a few funding rounds ago.
I think the first step betrays the weakness in this reasoning.
We already know that more powerful software tools do not make all developers more efficient. So the reverse can be true.
For software jobs to remain, not only must the tools keep making human developers more efficient, but the human developers need to continue making the automated developers more efficient.
Both directions must be accounted for.
Question: what is something our best human developers can do, that will always enhance the artificial developers results? Regardless of how far automated developers scale in quantity, quality, speed, economy and complexity of work?
It is the same question for any new automation vs. previous process.
You need to identify that, for anything past your first reasoning step to have a chance.
But if you can definitively answer it, I don’t think you need any more steps.
Sure, maybe apparent exponential growth tails off into an S curve at some point, as often happens. But this blog post seems to assume that is guaranteed to happen, which is a big leap of faith, and also makes this not a very interesting blog post. Because it's basically just, "Well if I assume the best arguments against my position are wrong, then I don't even need to address them, and I can instead focus on lesser arguments that are easier for me to discuss".
Do many people pay for software. Other than some small, one-time donations to shareware back in the day and to more recent project that operates outside of "app stores" I pay zero dollars for software. It is a negligible expense.
No doubt businesses still pay for software. Having friends in software sales, I know it does not necessarily sell itself. It takes (non-developer) work. Whether businesses truly need to purchase these licenses is an open question. Most companies I know want to reducedd their software bill, some believe they are being overcharged.
Engineers will still continue to work like crazy and produce 100x the output. The pay could still remain the same because the profit margins on these newly developed software is gonna be so much better.
That being said, I think there will be a cycle of adjustment - may be 2-5 years for this reality to set in. So in that interim there may be joblosses.
The reality is business can't really just scale their revenue by adding more profitable or positive ROI projects. There are not enough of them to go around. Eventually you hit a plateau in terms of growth and the R&D / engineering productivity can't translate into revenue anymore.