Does that automatically translate into more openings for the people whose full time job is providing that thing? I’m not sure that it does.

Historically, it would seem that often lowering the amount of people needed to produce a good is precisely what makes it cheaper.

So it’s not hard to imagine a world where AI tools make expert software developers significantly more productive while enabling other workers to user their own little programs and automations on their own jobs.

In such a world, the number of “lines of code” being used would be much greater that today.

But it is not clear to me that the amount of people working full time as “software developers“ would be larger as well.

Of course that is true. The nuance here is that software isn’t just getting cheaper but the activity to build it is changing. Instead of writing lines of code you are writing requirements. That shifts who can do the job. The customer might be able to do it themselves. This removes a market, not grows one. I am not saying the market will collapse just be careful applying a blunt theory to such a profound technological shift that isn’t just lowering cost but changing the entire process.

Jevons paradox is the stupid. What happened in the past is not a guarantee for the future. If you look at the economy, you would struggle to find buyers for any slop AI can generate, but execs keep pushing it. Case in point the whole Microslop saga, where execs start treating paying customers as test subjects to please the share holders.

I felt like the article had a good argument for why the AI hype will similarly be unsuccessful at erasing developers.

> AI changes how developers work rather than eliminating the need for their judgment. The complexity remains. Someone must understand the business problem, evaluate whether the generated code solves it correctly, consider security implications, ensure it integrates properly with existing systems, and maintain it as requirements evolve.

What is your rebuttal to this argument leading to the idea that developers do need to fear for their job security?

> if AI truly becomes what was promised

I mean they are promising AGI.

Of course in that case it will not happen this time. However, in that case software dev getting automated would concern me less than the risk of getting turned into some manner of office supply.

Imo as long as we do NOT have AGI, software-focused professional will stay a viable career path. Someone will have to design software systems on some level of abstraction.

Pre industrial revolution something like 80+ percent of the population was involved in agriculture. I question the assertion of more farmers now especially since an ever growing percentage of farms are not even owned by corporeal entities never mind actual farmers.

ooohhh I think I missed the intent of the statement... well done!

The machinery replaced a lot of low skill labor. But in its wake modern agriculture is now dependent on high skill labor. There are probably more engineers, geologists, climatologists, biologists, chemists, veterinarians, lawyers, and statisticians working in the agriculture sector today than there ever were previously.

If AI tools make expert developers a lot more productive on large software projects, while empowering non-developers to create their own little programs and automations, I am not sure how that would increase the number of people with “software developer” as their full-time job.

I think the better example is the mechanization of the loom created a huge amount of jobs in factories relative to the hand loom because the demand for clothing could not be met by the hand loom.

The craftsman who were forced to go to the factory were not paid more or better off.

There is not going to be more software engineers in the future than there is now, at least not in what would be recognizable as software engineering today. I could see there being vastly more startups with founders as agent orchestrators and many more CTO jobs. There is no way there is many more 2026 version of software engineering jobs at S&P 500 companies in the future. That seems borderline delusional to me.

Machinery and scale efficiencies made cost of entry higher than ever though

That's not the case for IT where entry barrier has been reduced to nothing.

There’s only so much land and only so much food we need to eat. The bounds on what software we need are much wider. But certainly there is a limit there as well.

Wait what? There are way less farmers than we had in the past. In many parts of the world, every member of the family was working on the farm, and now only 1 person can do the work of 5-10 people.

Is this sarcasm?

This doesn’t seem immediately false. Industrial society creates more complexity and specializations. There is more work to do all the time.

Yep, the current crunch experienced by developers is massively (but not exclusivly) on younger less experienced developers.

I was working with developer training for a while some 5-10 years back and already then I was starting to see some signs of an incoming over-saturation, the low interest rates probably masked much of it due to happy go lucky investments sucking up developers.

Low hanging and cheap automation,etc work is quickly dwindling now, especially as development firms are searching out new niches when the big "in-IT" customers aren't buying services inside the industry.

Luckily people will retire and young people probably aren't as bullish about the industry anymore, so we'll probably land in an equilebrium, the question is how long it'll take, because the long tail of things enabled by the mobile/tablet revolution is starting to be claimed.

Look at traditional manufacturing. Automation has made massive inroads. Not as much of the economy is directly supporting (eg, auto) manufacturers as it used to be (stats check needed). Nevertheless, there are plenty of mechanical engineering jobs. Not so many lower skill line worker jobs in the US any more, though. You have to ask yourself which category you are in (by analogy). Don’t be the SWE working on the assembly line.

this works for small increments in skill or small shifts in adjacent skills.

imagine being an engineer educated in multiple instruction sets: when compilers arrive on the scene it sure makes their job easier, but that does not retroactively change their education to suddenly have all the requisite mathematics and domain knowledge of say algorithms and data structures.

what is euphemistically described as a "remaining need for people to design, debug and resolve unexpected behaviors" is basically a lie by omission: the advent of AI does not automatically mean previously representative human workers suddenly will know higher level knowledge in order to do that. it takes education to achieve that, no trivial amount of chatbotting will enable displaced human workers to attain that higher level of consciousness. perhaps it can be attained by designing software that uploads AI skills to humans...