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It's true that the 'dream' has been here for ages, but I do think that automation might force us to rethink our job in the digital industry. I recently publish

It's true that the 'dream' has been here for ages, but I do think that automation might force us to rethink our job in the digital industry. I recently published an extensive article about the current state of these 'code machines', if developers might lose their job to them and what our options are. If you're interested, you can read it here: https://medium.com/design-and-develop/code-machines-29b066b65716 https://medium.com/design-and-develop/code-machines-29b066b6... Bottom line is that I don't think that developers should feel intimidated by machines right now, but not be surprised by their rise either. Not your coding skills, but your business will define if you’re still needed. If you’re coding basic low-cost websites at a high pace, you might run out of business faster than you might expect. If you can do it by repetition, a machine certainly can do that too. If you’re building crucial online services with a lot of custom functionality, the machines will have a harder time to keep up. Don’t worry about the need for your skills, worry about the need for your current business.

jules 11y ago
The thing is, is making a website with those services faster than with code? Even if it is slighly faster, they only work well for the 80%. The last 20% of features are impossible and you're back to code. I'd rather worry about higher and higher level programming tools that make programmers more productive. Hobo comes to mind (http://www.hobocentral.net/ http://www.hobocentral.net/) and Meteor, both making roughly orthogonal aspects of web programming easier and faster.
JDiculous 11y ago
Right. It's not that software engineers are going to go away, just that more and more cookie-cutter software will be buildable by less-technical people (eg. like what Wordpress has done for basic websites and what Unity has done for game development). Advances in NLP and A.I. will probably make code more English-like (eg. like SQL), or at the very least abstract away all the syntax quirks and other tedious low-level bullshit. Most software engineers are constantly reinventing the wheel (even if they don't realize it because that wheel hasn't been open-sourced yet), and that is the work that will be automated away. But of course the cutting edge will always require programmers (like someone above me commented). But don't be surprised if programming looks a lot different in the future than it looks today. I think software engineers tend to glorify the act of typing lines of code into a text editor. Code is simply a means to an end. http://www.jbernier.com/the-future-of-development-less-code http://www.jbernier.com/the-future-of-development-less-code

jules 11y ago

The thing is, is making a website with those services faster than with code? Even if it is slighly faster, they only work well for the 80%. The last 20% of features are impossible and you're back to code. I'd rather worry about higher and higher level programming tools that make programmers more productive. Hobo comes to mind (http://www.hobocentral.net/ http://www.hobocentral.net/) and Meteor, both making roughly orthogonal aspects of web programming easier and faster.

JDiculous 11y ago

Right. It's not that software engineers are going to go away, just that more and more cookie-cutter software will be buildable by less-technical people (eg. like what Wordpress has done for basic websites and what Unity has done for game development). Advances in NLP and A.I. will probably make code more English-like (eg. like SQL), or at the very least abstract away all the syntax quirks and other tedious low-level bullshit. Most software engineers are constantly reinventing the wheel (even if they don't realize it because that wheel hasn't been open-sourced yet), and that is the work that will be automated away. But of course the cutting edge will always require programmers (like someone above me commented). But don't be surprised if programming looks a lot different in the future than it looks today. I think software engineers tend to glorify the act of typing lines of code into a text editor. Code is simply a means to an end. http://www.jbernier.com/the-future-of-development-less-code http://www.jbernier.com/the-future-of-development-less-code