3 ms·

AI-driven software development down the road could theoretically commoditize developer skills. I sometimes wonder how many decisions I make per day that an AI

AI-driven software development down the road could theoretically commoditize developer skills. I sometimes wonder how many decisions I make per day that an AI could replicate in some repeatable way. Who knows, but nothing lasts forever.

runawaybottle 6y ago
We should technically be the last to be automated. We’ll destroy other labor systematically over decades, and then finally ourselves. We seem to be subconsciously precocious about our fate too, as we deprecate things at a faster and faster rate.
- sgillen 6y ago
  I think you might be surprised, it’s possible some types of programming could be automated away. Honestly I would consider writing programs more straightforward to automate than a lot of systems that need to interact with the physics map world, or with people.
  - ehsanu1 6y ago
    But programming is essentially about interacting with people more so than interacting with computers, even now. It's less so that the job will go away than that its nature will change, such that the proportion of time interacting with people goes up, and the time currently spent "coding" will instead be spent interacting with AI which writes the actual code. But this AI won't be smart enough for a while to talk to a normal human who doesn't know how to talk to it and translate requirements into the right form. Hence the need for the programmer. Programmers will make use of the automation to just become much more productive.
- save_ferris 6y ago
  > We should technically be the last to be automated. I disagree, developer work will be automated as soon as it is technologically feasible, especially given the high cost of software development labor. I foresee AI software development platforms starting to take over new application development at some point, building applications that humans have minimal access to the source of. Existing apps by humans will likely need human maintenance until AI is able to reason about larger legacy applications. We’re already starting to see no-code apps taking off, and AI will drive the proliferation of that technology as it becomes more sophisticated.
d-man 6y ago
I have doubts about AI driven end results, but I could totally see AI created domain specific languages

runawaybottle 6y ago

We should technically be the last to be automated. We’ll destroy other labor systematically over decades, and then finally ourselves. We seem to be subconsciously precocious about our fate too, as we deprecate things at a faster and faster rate.

sgillen 6y ago
I think you might be surprised, it’s possible some types of programming could be automated away. Honestly I would consider writing programs more straightforward to automate than a lot of systems that need to interact with the physics map world, or with people.
- ehsanu1 6y ago
  But programming is essentially about interacting with people more so than interacting with computers, even now. It's less so that the job will go away than that its nature will change, such that the proportion of time interacting with people goes up, and the time currently spent "coding" will instead be spent interacting with AI which writes the actual code. But this AI won't be smart enough for a while to talk to a normal human who doesn't know how to talk to it and translate requirements into the right form. Hence the need for the programmer. Programmers will make use of the automation to just become much more productive.
save_ferris 6y ago
> We should technically be the last to be automated. I disagree, developer work will be automated as soon as it is technologically feasible, especially given the high cost of software development labor. I foresee AI software development platforms starting to take over new application development at some point, building applications that humans have minimal access to the source of. Existing apps by humans will likely need human maintenance until AI is able to reason about larger legacy applications. We’re already starting to see no-code apps taking off, and AI will drive the proliferation of that technology as it becomes more sophisticated.

d-man 6y ago

I have doubts about AI driven end results, but I could totally see AI created domain specific languages