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>I propose a simple lens to settle this debate: look around you and count how many products or services you use regularly that you wish are better digitized or

>I propose a simple lens to settle this debate: look around you and count how many products or services you use regularly that you wish are better digitized or “software-ized.” Unless and until that number is 0, there will be more developers, not less. While this is a great argument that there will be more software in the future (something that I don't think anyone disputes), it's not an argument in favor of the proposition that there will be more developers, because the whole point of AI-driven development is to automate what a developer does. One reason there are a lot of businesses still using antiquated systems is that 1) the systems work for their purposes, so their need is not acute; and 2) custom software development is expensive. Your local gym can't afford to pay someone thousands of dollars for a custom app (or even hundreds of dollars for a customized version of an existing app). But AI-driven development promises an order of magnitude drop in cost. So yes, we should see a lot more digitization as it becomes available. I do agree in the short term that it won't drive the number of developers down, since for the foreseeable future skilled people will be needed to oversee the AI product. But it will vastly increase productivity. Unfortunately, if history is any guide developers will not reap any of the rewards for the increased productivity, and their real wages may actually decline.

BobbyJo 3y ago
Author's argument also rests on developers being the bottleneck. I think a lot of things that could be digitized, aren't for reasons that have little to do with software.
throw_pm23 3y ago
I look around sometimes and see digitized/software-ized products I wish weren't. So the number can be negative. One example: restaurant menus. Second example: car audio volume buttons/knobs.
- dwaltrip 3y ago
  This is a good point. However, even if we account for this and subtract all products that are currently digitized poorly, I think we still get a very large positive number. The number of useful digital products that don’t yet exist is enormous. We can’t fathom the vast array of creations that future generations will dream up. P.s. very strong agree about digital menus… so annoying to use!
leroy-is-here 3y ago
A developer does more than just write text and that’s all these AI programs can do: generate text. There’s not a single AI that can generate source, attempt to compile it, fix any source errors like the infamous missing semi-colon, and then produce a binary. Anyway, I think advancement of technologies which generate text can make an individual developer’s task more efficient, e.g. the compiler. But, because of this efficiency on the individual, then more individuals will now be able to take part which means more jobs will be created. To restate, I don’t think “AI” will make people more productive, it just makes doing the task more productive. This seems like a ridiculous statement, but consider the cotton-gin. Because of the tool, we could throw more and more people at the problem of gathering cotton. That’s what the development of new tools gets us, more work with the tool that does the job.
arecurrence 3y ago
While I generally agree with your post, I would like to add that there is a plethora of tasks humans currently do that we have struggled to write acceptable algorithms for for a long time. This has blocked software development from further encroaching into those spaces. The function approximation that AI offers is good enough to open software development to entire new aspects that have long resisted it. Even something seemingly so simple as order taking from a drive thru window has required algorithms that we have simply been unable to effectively create. We still haven't created them, but we can now approximate them. These function approximations can now write creative stories and draw pictures of an astounding variety that would have simply been considered impossible even a decade ago. Soon that gym you mentioned will have 100 wide ranging automated app designs to pick from, or even a thousand automatically categorized by style. There will still be countless developers in the mix but they will be working on much more interesting tasks than writing a gym app that we currently allocate Human resources to. Perhaps wages will decline, but the work will be a lot more interesting :)
Bukhmanizer 3y ago
> Your local gym can't afford to pay someone thousands of dollars for a custom app (or even hundreds of dollars for a customized version of an existing app). In my experience this isn’t such a problem. When technology makes it easier/cheaper to solve problems, the response is usually to try and solve more problems rather than spending less. Your local gym might be able to afford a small app now, but I bet the big gyms start adding personalized nutrition/fitness routines into their products. If we’re going by the history of software engineering, a more likely scenario is that developers start using generative AI to replace a lot of the people/management roles and capture even more of the profit. Of course, things aren’t the same as they were in the 70’s and 80’s, so maybe things won’t work out the same way, but I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion.
- maigret 3y ago
  Exactly because the capital is quite constant (either external investors or existing profits) and competition will up their game as well, trying to use the innovation as a differentiator. We can nowadays fulfill all the needs of a person from the 50s, yet we keep finding new occupations, increasing our standards and we keep making the world more complex, desperately so even.
chefandy 3y ago
I'm no economist, but I think these arguments conflate the financial well-being of an industry with that of its workers. Automation increases any given industry's financial well-being but it's not evenly distributed. Many software developers seem so accustomed to a disproportionately high labor value that they: a) incorrectly assume they can easily pivot their capability into something else, and b) have entirely lost touch with the realities of most labor markets. Even if its not tomorrow, I think this is going to be a rude awakening for many people in software.
- vannevar 3y ago
  Yes, this is the point I was making about developers not getting much of a share of the increased profits from the productivity boost. That's been the story for workers (at least in the US) since the 70s.
  - chefandy 3y ago
    Yeah. Tech optimists of late smack of their .com bust era counterparts clinging to early net utopianism and ignoring history and empirical evidence. The popular platitude "the rules have changed" wasn't a lie– they were just wrong about which rules changed.
adventured 3y ago
There may be more overall developers - they won't be writing code directly. There will be fewer people writing code directly. They'll be using tools that utilize AI to build software. The AI will be writing the code. In the future there will be a lot more jobs watching and assisting and using robots in factories as well. The net count of factory workers will be lower than whatever the peak was (whether we're referring to the peak in eg the US or China). This is how corporations will boost margins even further in the tech field. AI writing code will be considerably cheaper than what big tech has been paying (which isn't to say big tech will eliminate all of their code writing jobs, just a lot of them). Peak code writing employment has occurred in the US, the latest tech layoffs are the end of that era (and will be recognized as such in hindsight). Software developer will typically no longer be understood to mean a person that writes code, the terms will change (and most likely that'll happen this decade). Only older developers will still think of it in those terms. Oh, you mean, like, you write the code directly? Dude, what century are you from?

BobbyJo 3y ago

Author's argument also rests on developers being the bottleneck. I think a lot of things that could be digitized, aren't for reasons that have little to do with software.

throw_pm23 3y ago

I look around sometimes and see digitized/software-ized products I wish weren't. So the number can be negative. One example: restaurant menus. Second example: car audio volume buttons/knobs.

dwaltrip 3y ago
This is a good point. However, even if we account for this and subtract all products that are currently digitized poorly, I think we still get a very large positive number. The number of useful digital products that don’t yet exist is enormous. We can’t fathom the vast array of creations that future generations will dream up. P.s. very strong agree about digital menus… so annoying to use!

leroy-is-here 3y ago

A developer does more than just write text and that’s all these AI programs can do: generate text. There’s not a single AI that can generate source, attempt to compile it, fix any source errors like the infamous missing semi-colon, and then produce a binary. Anyway, I think advancement of technologies which generate text can make an individual developer’s task more efficient, e.g. the compiler. But, because of this efficiency on the individual, then more individuals will now be able to take part which means more jobs will be created. To restate, I don’t think “AI” will make people more productive, it just makes doing the task more productive. This seems like a ridiculous statement, but consider the cotton-gin. Because of the tool, we could throw more and more people at the problem of gathering cotton. That’s what the development of new tools gets us, more work with the tool that does the job.

arecurrence 3y ago

While I generally agree with your post, I would like to add that there is a plethora of tasks humans currently do that we have struggled to write acceptable algorithms for for a long time. This has blocked software development from further encroaching into those spaces. The function approximation that AI offers is good enough to open software development to entire new aspects that have long resisted it. Even something seemingly so simple as order taking from a drive thru window has required algorithms that we have simply been unable to effectively create. We still haven't created them, but we can now approximate them. These function approximations can now write creative stories and draw pictures of an astounding variety that would have simply been considered impossible even a decade ago. Soon that gym you mentioned will have 100 wide ranging automated app designs to pick from, or even a thousand automatically categorized by style. There will still be countless developers in the mix but they will be working on much more interesting tasks than writing a gym app that we currently allocate Human resources to. Perhaps wages will decline, but the work will be a lot more interesting :)

Bukhmanizer 3y ago

> Your local gym can't afford to pay someone thousands of dollars for a custom app (or even hundreds of dollars for a customized version of an existing app). In my experience this isn’t such a problem. When technology makes it easier/cheaper to solve problems, the response is usually to try and solve more problems rather than spending less. Your local gym might be able to afford a small app now, but I bet the big gyms start adding personalized nutrition/fitness routines into their products. If we’re going by the history of software engineering, a more likely scenario is that developers start using generative AI to replace a lot of the people/management roles and capture even more of the profit. Of course, things aren’t the same as they were in the 70’s and 80’s, so maybe things won’t work out the same way, but I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion.

maigret 3y ago
Exactly because the capital is quite constant (either external investors or existing profits) and competition will up their game as well, trying to use the innovation as a differentiator. We can nowadays fulfill all the needs of a person from the 50s, yet we keep finding new occupations, increasing our standards and we keep making the world more complex, desperately so even.

chefandy 3y ago

I'm no economist, but I think these arguments conflate the financial well-being of an industry with that of its workers. Automation increases any given industry's financial well-being but it's not evenly distributed. Many software developers seem so accustomed to a disproportionately high labor value that they: a) incorrectly assume they can easily pivot their capability into something else, and b) have entirely lost touch with the realities of most labor markets. Even if its not tomorrow, I think this is going to be a rude awakening for many people in software.

vannevar 3y ago
Yes, this is the point I was making about developers not getting much of a share of the increased profits from the productivity boost. That's been the story for workers (at least in the US) since the 70s.
- chefandy 3y ago
  Yeah. Tech optimists of late smack of their .com bust era counterparts clinging to early net utopianism and ignoring history and empirical evidence. The popular platitude "the rules have changed" wasn't a lie– they were just wrong about which rules changed.

adventured 3y ago

There may be more overall developers - they won't be writing code directly. There will be fewer people writing code directly. They'll be using tools that utilize AI to build software. The AI will be writing the code. In the future there will be a lot more jobs watching and assisting and using robots in factories as well. The net count of factory workers will be lower than whatever the peak was (whether we're referring to the peak in eg the US or China). This is how corporations will boost margins even further in the tech field. AI writing code will be considerably cheaper than what big tech has been paying (which isn't to say big tech will eliminate all of their code writing jobs, just a lot of them). Peak code writing employment has occurred in the US, the latest tech layoffs are the end of that era (and will be recognized as such in hindsight). Software developer will typically no longer be understood to mean a person that writes code, the terms will change (and most likely that'll happen this decade). Only older developers will still think of it in those terms. Oh, you mean, like, you write the code directly? Dude, what century are you from?