4 ms·

I think the thought process is from the perspective of the employer, if you assume these two statements are true: 1) AI tools increase developer productivity,

I think the thought process is from the perspective of the employer, if you assume these two statements are true: 1) AI tools increase developer productivity, allowing projects to get completed faster; and 2) AI tools offset a nonzero amount of skill prerequisites, allowing developers to write "better" code, regardless of their skill level With those in mind, it seems reasonable to conclude that the price to e.g. build an app or website will decrease, because it'll require either fewer man-hours 'til completion and/or less skill from the hired developers doing said work. You do make a good point that "building an app" or "building a website" will likely shift in meaning to something more complex, wherein we get "better" outputs for the same amount of work/price though.

frant-hartm 5y ago
>that the price to e.g. build an app or website will decrease Yes, and this in turn increases demand as more people/companies/etc.. can afford it.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  If there are diminishing returns to expanding a given piece of software, an employer could end up making a better product, but not that much better, and employing fewer resources (esp. people) to do so. And even that could still be fine for programmers, as other firms will be enticed into buying the creation of software -- firms that didn't want to build software when programming was less efficient/more expensive.
littlestymaar 5y ago
Now replace “AI” in your 1 & 2 points with “Github” (and the trend of open-sourcing libraries, making them available for all). All you said still works, and it did not harm programmer jobs in any way (quite the opposite). And actually, I really don't see AI in the next decade making more of a difference than what Github did (making thousands of man-hour of works available for free). Around 2040 or 2050, maybe. But not soon, AI is still really far.

frant-hartm 5y ago

>that the price to e.g. build an app or website will decrease Yes, and this in turn increases demand as more people/companies/etc.. can afford it.

Jeff_Brown 5y ago
If there are diminishing returns to expanding a given piece of software, an employer could end up making a better product, but not that much better, and employing fewer resources (esp. people) to do so. And even that could still be fine for programmers, as other firms will be enticed into buying the creation of software -- firms that didn't want to build software when programming was less efficient/more expensive.

littlestymaar 5y ago

Now replace “AI” in your 1 & 2 points with “Github” (and the trend of open-sourcing libraries, making them available for all). All you said still works, and it did not harm programmer jobs in any way (quite the opposite). And actually, I really don't see AI in the next decade making more of a difference than what Github did (making thousands of man-hour of works available for free). Around 2040 or 2050, maybe. But not soon, AI is still really far.