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Ask HN: How much longer do coders have in the industry given automation?

A lot of software engineering is best compared to plumbing. Connect data from one input, mangle it a bit, translate it into a new output. As artificial intelligence becomes more power, I think we all agree that some parts of the "code" will be automatically written + maintained + deployed. In a quick poll at my job, the answers seem to be within the range of 5 - 20 years, with most saying 15 - 20. Does this mean we're all going to need to get into a new profession in 10 years, and that the demand for programmers is going to decline in the next 5 years?

jki275 7y ago
There's a whole lot of software engineering that is not plumbing.
- MuffinFlavored 7y ago
  Could you give some examples?
  - juststeve 7y ago
    the engineering part.
    - MuffinFlavored 7y ago
      I've been working at corporate companies as a "software engineer" for 5+ years now, and it's all plumbing.
      - jki275 7y ago
        Who do you think writes the libraries you "plumb"?
    - jki275 7y ago
      This.
mratsim 7y ago
I'm not worried: https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/08/25/a-very-comprehensive-and-precise-spec/ https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/08/25/a-very-comprehensi...
RodgerTheGreat 7y ago
There is considerable motivation to reduce the need for programmer labor- programmers are one of the most expensive ingredients in producing many digital products and services. Many companies have made headlines with promises of visual programming tools and/or machine learning leading to "codeless software", but they are consistently either pure snake oil, highly limited in scope, or "mechanical turks" which obscure the role of human labor for marketing purposes. Many limited domains have been "solved" from the perspective of having software available which allows non-technical users to suit their own needs: You can make a blog, a web store, or a wiki without any knowledge of HTML or a programming language. Yet even in these spaces, there are still users with a desire for custom solutions, and thus a market. There will always be new problems to solve- or old problems to solve better- requiring fresh ingenuity. Marketing spin aside, I have seen zero evidence that progress has been made in replacing humans with software for the task of turning vague requirements into concrete, precise, machine-readable specifications. As long as that holds, software engineering as a profession will not disappear.
- MuffinFlavored 7y ago
  > Marketing spin aside, I have seen zero evidence that progress has been made in replacing humans with software for the task of turning vague requirements into concrete, precise, machine-readable specifications https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19347976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19347976 Maybe the "MarkDown + compiler for vague requirements" is just around the corner?
  - luckylion 7y ago
    > Maybe the "MarkDown + compiler for vague requirements" is just around the corner? Isn't that where you put random code snippets + a vague description of what you expect it to do into a question on stackoverflow and wait for some rep hungry dev to turn it into working code? Jokes aside, even with humans doing the interpreting and high costs incentivizing those defining the requirements to be precise and clear, I see a lot of friction. A not-really-smart automaton won't help there, I'm afraid.
  - RodgerTheGreat 7y ago
eloff 7y ago
We've been seeing steady advances on this front, not from AI, but from improving tools. Programmers today can often do in a week what couldn't be done in a month twenty years ago. But demand for programmers is steadily rising. Well make the plumbing stuff easier (I'm working on this directly) but that will just enable programmers with more time to work on real problems. It won't reduce demand, we're far from peak coding or even imaging what that might look like.
- MuffinFlavored 7y ago
  > Well make the plumbing stuff easier (I'm working on this directly) Could you elaborate?
  - eloff 7y ago
    I'm working on software that generates your plumbing code automatically from graphql queries. Similar to Hasura if you're familiar with it.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> artificial intelligence becomes more power, I think we all agree that some parts of the "code" will be automatically written + maintained + deployed. Who needs AI? Large parts already are automatically written, from simplified higher levels specs. In fact, that's been true since we developed the first compiler, and all progress in tooling has made it more true. All that progress does is increase the impact each programmer has, and the value of each hour of programmer labor compared to other labor in the economy. Software Development may involve more work that looks like analysis and architecture and less that looks like what we think of as coding as time goes on, just like programmers now work at a much higher level of abstraction than when the job involved manually flipping switches to set the code in a machine. But I don't think any great collapse is imminent.

jki275 7y ago

There's a whole lot of software engineering that is not plumbing.

MuffinFlavored 7y ago
Could you give some examples?
- juststeve 7y ago
  the engineering part.
  - MuffinFlavored 7y ago
    I've been working at corporate companies as a "software engineer" for 5+ years now, and it's all plumbing.
    - jki275 7y ago
      Who do you think writes the libraries you "plumb"?
  - jki275 7y ago
    This.

mratsim 7y ago

I'm not worried: https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/08/25/a-very-comprehensive-and-precise-spec/ https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2016/08/25/a-very-comprehensi...

RodgerTheGreat 7y ago

There is considerable motivation to reduce the need for programmer labor- programmers are one of the most expensive ingredients in producing many digital products and services. Many companies have made headlines with promises of visual programming tools and/or machine learning leading to "codeless software", but they are consistently either pure snake oil, highly limited in scope, or "mechanical turks" which obscure the role of human labor for marketing purposes. Many limited domains have been "solved" from the perspective of having software available which allows non-technical users to suit their own needs: You can make a blog, a web store, or a wiki without any knowledge of HTML or a programming language. Yet even in these spaces, there are still users with a desire for custom solutions, and thus a market. There will always be new problems to solve- or old problems to solve better- requiring fresh ingenuity. Marketing spin aside, I have seen zero evidence that progress has been made in replacing humans with software for the task of turning vague requirements into concrete, precise, machine-readable specifications. As long as that holds, software engineering as a profession will not disappear.

MuffinFlavored 7y ago
> Marketing spin aside, I have seen zero evidence that progress has been made in replacing humans with software for the task of turning vague requirements into concrete, precise, machine-readable specifications https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19347976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19347976 Maybe the "MarkDown + compiler for vague requirements" is just around the corner?
- luckylion 7y ago
  > Maybe the "MarkDown + compiler for vague requirements" is just around the corner? Isn't that where you put random code snippets + a vague description of what you expect it to do into a question on stackoverflow and wait for some rep hungry dev to turn it into working code? Jokes aside, even with humans doing the interpreting and high costs incentivizing those defining the requirements to be precise and clear, I see a lot of friction. A not-really-smart automaton won't help there, I'm afraid.
- RodgerTheGreat 7y ago

eloff 7y ago

We've been seeing steady advances on this front, not from AI, but from improving tools. Programmers today can often do in a week what couldn't be done in a month twenty years ago. But demand for programmers is steadily rising. Well make the plumbing stuff easier (I'm working on this directly) but that will just enable programmers with more time to work on real problems. It won't reduce demand, we're far from peak coding or even imaging what that might look like.

MuffinFlavored 7y ago
> Well make the plumbing stuff easier (I'm working on this directly) Could you elaborate?
- eloff 7y ago
  I'm working on software that generates your plumbing code automatically from graphql queries. Similar to Hasura if you're familiar with it.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> artificial intelligence becomes more power, I think we all agree that some parts of the "code" will be automatically written + maintained + deployed. Who needs AI? Large parts already are automatically written, from simplified higher levels specs. In fact, that's been true since we developed the first compiler, and all progress in tooling has made it more true. All that progress does is increase the impact each programmer has, and the value of each hour of programmer labor compared to other labor in the economy. Software Development may involve more work that looks like analysis and architecture and less that looks like what we think of as coding as time goes on, just like programmers now work at a much higher level of abstraction than when the job involved manually flipping switches to set the code in a machine. But I don't think any great collapse is imminent.