5 ms·

I bet developers will start to lose jobs to AI. Maybe before truck drivers do. The reaction here on HN will be something to behold.

WalterBright 10y ago
It's already happened. Those AIs are called compilers. Compilers get more powerful every year. If you took them away, there aren't enough people on the planet to do the same job with assemblers.
- NotSammyHagar 10y ago
  Brilliant comment! I guess devs are lucky to have enough jobs left to work.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    What happens is pretty straightforward - the more powerful the AI devtools get, the more is demanded of them. I look at programs I wrote 20, 30 years ago, and am bemused by how trivial they look today. I'm calling a compiler an AI tool, because what is it other than you type in what you want the computer to do, and the compiler figures out how to do it?
NotSammyHagar 10y ago
There's no doubt that some programmer's jobs will start to disappear. Think about how many web devs/ html jockeys are no longer needed because word press or 100 other web publishing platforms are easy enough for non pgmrs to use. How long will a million programmers write custom software instead of just packaging apps? Today, places like Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Amazon have a lot of programmers writing custom apps. And lots of other companies - eventually I think we'll need fewer of them. Maybe as a software engineer, I could be retrained to do genetic engineering or dna analysis. But it's a lot easier for me than the guy making hamburgers at McDonalds. I don't want anyone to lose their job, but this change of reduced labor based work is inevitable. Economic forces are hard to overcome. Just like coal has been wiped out by cheap natural gas - it wasn't a conspiracy.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
aaron695 10y ago
> I bet developers will start to lose jobs to AI. Maybe before truck drivers do. The reaction here on HN will be something to behold. Other than the fact you don't really seem to get how hard it is to develop (This would be one to the highest levels of AI) When developers are automated everyone else will also be unemployed, since it's developers who are doing the un-employing.

WalterBright 10y ago

It's already happened. Those AIs are called compilers. Compilers get more powerful every year. If you took them away, there aren't enough people on the planet to do the same job with assemblers.

NotSammyHagar 10y ago
Brilliant comment! I guess devs are lucky to have enough jobs left to work.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  What happens is pretty straightforward - the more powerful the AI devtools get, the more is demanded of them. I look at programs I wrote 20, 30 years ago, and am bemused by how trivial they look today. I'm calling a compiler an AI tool, because what is it other than you type in what you want the computer to do, and the compiler figures out how to do it?

NotSammyHagar 10y ago

There's no doubt that some programmer's jobs will start to disappear. Think about how many web devs/ html jockeys are no longer needed because word press or 100 other web publishing platforms are easy enough for non pgmrs to use. How long will a million programmers write custom software instead of just packaging apps? Today, places like Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Amazon have a lot of programmers writing custom apps. And lots of other companies - eventually I think we'll need fewer of them. Maybe as a software engineer, I could be retrained to do genetic engineering or dna analysis. But it's a lot easier for me than the guy making hamburgers at McDonalds. I don't want anyone to lose their job, but this change of reduced labor based work is inevitable. Economic forces are hard to overcome. Just like coal has been wiped out by cheap natural gas - it wasn't a conspiracy.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

aaron695 10y ago

> I bet developers will start to lose jobs to AI. Maybe before truck drivers do. The reaction here on HN will be something to behold. Other than the fact you don't really seem to get how hard it is to develop (This would be one to the highest levels of AI) When developers are automated everyone else will also be unemployed, since it's developers who are doing the un-employing.