Let’s assume that in 10 years, AI has advanced absurdly, insanely fast, and is now capable of doing everything a Senior SWE can do. It can program in 15 different languages, 95% accuracy with almost no mistakes, can create entire applications in minutes, and no more engineers or SWEs are needed… What will all the devs do? Do they just become homeless? Transition to medical field, nursing? Become tradespeople like plumbers, HVAC?

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.ee
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    19 hours ago

    They’re probably gonna laugh at the absurdity of the situation because some new popular language will come along and the AI will be back to pushing out broken code. That, or laugh because the code in well used languages will include a shit ton of vulnerabilities that wouldn’t be present if real devs had to double check code before pushing it out to the public.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          17 hours ago

          In this hypothetical, why would we create new languages? What benefit does that have for AI-gen code?

          So either we’re going to improve AI-gen to the point where we rely on it, or human devs are still important in which case new languages matter. The main exception here are languages specifically designed for AI, in which case error-rate would go down.

          So either AI pushes out broken code and human devs are still important, or AI doesn’t push out broken code and new languages aren’t valuable.

          • hex@programming.dev
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            11 hours ago

            I think both can happen at the same time. There’s a lot of fkn nerds out there. (I’m a software developer myself)

  • BigBenis@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    Finally free from the Golden Handcuffs, I’d use my extra time to do something I’ve always wanted, like music production, which would also inevitably be taken over by AI.

  • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    I’m not a programmer, but I don’t think I’d pay for code that was 95% accurate. That sounds buggy af

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      19 hours ago

      I am a programmer, and I also wouldn’t stand for that either. We also introduce bugs and are probably around that 95% rate, but at least we know the most important uses are correct and the person who introduced them can usually fix them quickly. With AI, there’s no guarantee where the bugs will occur.

  • Boomkop3@reddthat.com
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    21 hours ago

    They’re going to keep doing their job, good luck to some manager who thinks they can be verbose enough to get their idea across

  • maniii@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Ai-herder or Robot-farmer or Llama-raiser etc etc

    devs still needed to ensure code is sane and not some insane hallucination.

  • clutchtwopointzero@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Coding is just a part of the overall “programming” problem. Most problematic areas are in translating what the customer wants into code (requirements analysis), modifying code to overcome specific constraints, integration, etc and etc

  • anon_8675309@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Retire. All I ever wanted to be was a programmer. If I can’t do that anymore I’ll just retire. I’m saving/investing every penny I can just in case.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      19 hours ago

      Same. If I can retire before my job is irrelevant, I’ll work on my own projects on my own terms. If I don’t, at least I have a nice pile of assets and can coast with another job.

      That said, I don’t think people like you and I will have problems, because we’ll adapt. It’s the “programming is just a job” crowd that would have a lot of issues.

  • vane@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Writing code is last thing you want to do as senior SWE because every line of code is potential debt and maintenence problem.
    The just write code bro, figure out things later attitude is good for R&D, MVP and POC that is like 10% of job.

    Just like with art, writing code like drawing is just a skill. AI is trying to replace the obvious part (that is actually the reward from thinking and describing problem in your head) because it can’t replace thinking. Removing rewards bring us to depression, depression bring us to death.

    Ergo AI will kill economy with no people left to replace it so we will end up to being monkas.
    That’s why I’d say SWE will go to farm and wait untill people in cities will start starving to death because AI stopped working and there is nobody left to fix it.

      • vane@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I am starting to believe that current “AI” is way for corporate to gatekeep the knowledge and as you said lead us to idiocracy. On the other hand people always amaze me on how they can collectively find the way out from these situations and turn the cards to their side. So there is always hope.

  • Vipsu@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    Honestly people are getting distracted here. Now lets say A.I makes developers 50% more productive thats a huge boost for smaller companies with only handful of developers.

    Many companies are only thinking about reducing costs for themselves but at the same time they’re freeing up a lot of talent for new and old competitors.

    Here’s some food for thought:

    • Open source developers may use A.I to develop better software to close gap between paid alternatives. (Blender, Gimp, Krita, Linux distributions, mastodon, lemmy, pixelfed)
    • Many LLM’s can already be ran freely and locally. These will only get better as technology progresses. This can make selling/profiting from A.I services a lot harder
    • A.I may be used to block ads or obfuscate (create bunch of fake data) user data that is sold to advertisers.
    • Some media sites are already using A.I to write articles. Whats the point when users may just use chatbot to get all the information without ever engaging with the source.

    These are just few that come to mind. but the unkowns with this are quite terrifying.

  • Ænima@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    They’re just gonna sit around and wait a few months until they are begged to come back and can demand more compensation. The current generative AI, which is not general AI, will not be able to replace high functioning jobs. Eventually, a lot of those software engineers will be asked back and get much more for their services.

  • phughes@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    This thread is full of people comparing OPs hypothetical about 10 years from now with last year’s capability.

    Will AI progress that fast? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It probably won’t get that good, but it doesn’t matter. If it gets as good as your average junior that’s going to mean something like 100% increase in productivity, which means 50% as many jobs and that’s going to be a BIG FUCKING DEAL.

    Especially when it’s going to be replacing a lot of other types of office workers. What kind of job is your average software dev going to transition to? Tech support? Not anymore. UI Designer? LOL. Manager? And who are you going to be managing?

    If the US doesn’t hit 15-20% unemployment in the next 10 years I’ll eat my hat. I’ll be eating it either way because I’ll be starving to death.

    • Nalivai@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      There is a hard limitation on LLM, it doesn’t and by definition can not have a criteria for truth, and unless something completely new emerges, it will never replace a junior, really. Some managers can be convinced that it did, but that will be a lie and the company that believes it will suffer.
      It can transform some junior jobs for sure, some people might need to relearn some practices, there will probably be some shift in some methods, but unless something fundamentally new will appear, there is no way LLM will meaningfully replace meaningful amount of people

  • hperrin@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    You have to understand what software can do, how to design it, and how it should interact with other systems in order to write software and not just code, and AI can’t do that. If you tell it to make you A, and what you really want is B, you’ll never get what you want.

    Only about 10-20 percent of my job as a software engineer is writing code. AI can be really amazing at writing code, but unless it can do the other 80-90% of my job without me, I’ll be safe.

    Now, whether middle and upper management will know this is an entirely different question. A lot of them think that lines of code written is a good measure of productivity, when in fact it’s often the opposite.

    I foresee there being a big struggle for management to come to grips with the fact that AI is better suited at their job than ours.