Disruptive technology disrupts.

It sucks for the people caught by the change. Honestly, I’m sorry. But rapid, disruptive change has always been part of working in technology. The industry doesn’t owe any particular job category permanence.

I think the more interesting conversation is what happens to the learning industry now. If AI changes how software is built, then teaching people to become developers has to change too.

We shouldn’t be asking how to preserve the old pipeline of teaching people to write code so they can get an entry level programming job. We should be asking what it means to teach someone to become a developer when AI can increasingly write the code.

The scarce skill may shift from producing code to understanding what should be built, decomposing problems, designing systems, evaluating tradeoffs, debugging complex behavior, verifying AI generated output, and understanding whether the resulting system is actually correct, secure, maintainable, and fit for purpose.

That doesn’t necessarily mean fewer people need to learn software development. It could mean many more people can become capable developers because the mechanical barrier to producing software has fallen dramatically.

The educational model just has to catch up.

The technology changed. The answer shouldn’t be to pretend it didn’t. It should be figuring out how to use it to produce the next generation of developers.

That’s going to be contentious for some people, even a little insensitive. But it’s just how it works in our industry.