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I agree it's amazing. But your comment doesn't touch on the key economic question that will decide for how many people it will be this amazing new dev experienc

I agree it's amazing. But your comment doesn't touch on the key economic question that will decide for how many people it will be this amazing new dev experience. If AI makes developers twice as productive (maybe a few years down the road with GPT-6), will this additional supply of developer capacity get absorbed by existing and new demand? Or will there be half as many developers? Or will the same number of developers get paid far less than today? These questions arise even if not a single existing dev job can be completely taken over by an AI. A secondary question is about the type of work that lends itself to AI automation. Some things considered "coding" require knowing a disproportionate number of tiny technical details within a narrowly defined context in order to effect relatively small changes in output. Things like CSS come to mind. If this is the sort of coding you're doing then I think it's time to expand your skillset to include a wider set of responsibilities.

torginus 3y ago
Considering how much the craft has expanded - when in high school, I wrote an application for pocket for a small business in Borland Delphi 7. The domain knowledge I needed for that was knowing the programming environment, and a bit about Windows. Nowadays, like the rest of the full-stack 'web' developers, I work on complex webapps that use Typescript, HTML, CSS, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Postgres, bash, GitHub Actions, .NET, Node, Python, AWS, Git. And that isn't even the full list. And it's not even a flex, all of the above is used by a relatively straightforward LoB app with some hairy dependencies, a CI/CD pipeline + a bit of real world messiness. I need to have at least a passing familiarity with all those technologies to put together a working application and I'm sure I'm not alone with this uphill struggle. It's a staggering amount to remember for a single person, and LLMs have been a godsend.
gitgud 3y ago
> “If AI makes developers twice as productive (maybe a few years down the road with GPT-6), will this additional supply of developer capacity get absorbed by existing and new demand? Or will there be half as many developers? Or will the same number of developers get paid far less than today?” Something to remember is that every new innovation in software development only raises the expectations of the people paying the software developers. If developers are 3x as productive, then the goals and features will be 3x big. The reason for this is that companies are in competition, if they lag behind, then others will eat up the market. The company that fires 50% of their staff because of “AI Assistance” is not going to be able to compete with the company that doesn’t fire their staff and still uses “AI Assistance”…
- fauigerzigerk 3y ago
  I agree that demand will very likely grow with expectations to absorb some of the additional capacity. But there is a limit to that because companies compete on more than just software. They also compete on price and on other things that have nothing to do with software. If the price of software drops, it's not a given that all of the savings will be spent more and better software.
  - gitgud 3y ago
    I think if the price of software drops, then there’s a huge opportunity for smaller companies to build better products for cheaper and steal market share. So more people building software. This also means larger companies will need to build more to defend their share of the market. Meaning more people building software.
- archiepeach 3y ago
  I think this hits the nail on the head. Obviously a lot of the participants in this discussion are programmers, so there is going to be a fair amount of bias where people feel like their self-worth is being attacked/devalued. That being said, from a company perspective, this should much more unlock "moving faster" than "let's rest on our laurels". Any company that has a leading position in a particular industry is currently at greater risk of upstarts achieving their feature set in a reduced amount of time. The incentive for all companies will be to find programmers who are skilled in directing and debugging AIs. I am currently building an iOS app using GPT-4 (I don't know Swift), and am developing an awareness of what it can/can't do, and surprised that I'm moving at the speed I did when creating React Native apps. In a possibly more competitive future market for developers, it does work in one's favour if some developers resist the efficiency improvements of AI.
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  Blacksmiths didn't die, they became mechanical engineers?
rjrodger 3y ago
To me this looks like a Jevons Paradox situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox [1] Increased developer productivity will lead to a lot more software development, at all levels, rather than less. 1. "In economics, the Jevons paradox occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the falling cost of use induces increases in demand enough that resource use is increased, rather than reduced."
- fauigerzigerk 3y ago
  Yes, demand grows as prices drop. I don't doubt this general principle for a second. But the question is about degrees. If the cost of making software at today's level of quality and quantity drops by half, what share of the savings is going to be spent on more and better software, what share is going to be spent on other things and what share will be used to cut prices? I think there is no general answer to this question. What would Netflix do if software development costs dropped by half? Develop twice as much software? Spend it on more content? Cut the price of subscriptions? In this specific case, my bet would be on content.
  - renlo 3y ago
    To me software _is_ content because it's tied to attention and consumption. There will always be humans producing it and consuming it, it isn't a limited resource that goes away once a tool comes along to make it easier to produce. If the costs halve, then more is produced.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  Let's not forget that reduced cotton prices (because of a technological improvement) did make cotton more affordable, lots of new clothes at reduced prices, increased demand, but it didn't turn out that great for the slaves.
  - delecti 3y ago
    The relevant aspect of what you're referencing is that it led to more slaves. For more than a decade, software developers have easily been able to get low 6 figure jobs right out of college. We're pretty far from slaves.
victorbjorklund 3y ago
It is way "easier" to be productive as a developer today vs 20 years ago. I can easily build web apps fast that would have taken a big team to build if even possible. Yet, more devs today than 20 years ago. If every dev is suddenly 20 times more productive (however that would be measured) means that some projects that in the past would not be "profitable"/"worth it" are now no brainers and companies will invest in doing those projects.
singhrac 3y ago
I’m very bullish. My dad and I were talking about this the other day, but there are still so many quality-of-life improvements that are bottlenecked by not having enough developers or enough time. For example, deploying hardware to all subways to track their status and location with higher accuracy. I want a truly smart meal planner that can look in my fridge and my eating habits and tell me what I need to eat. I want a little plugin for Obsidian that will let me sync tasks with Linear. There are tons of tiny little pieces of technology that would be useful but their economic value is low or unclear; if developers become more efficient at not only writing code but testing, deploying, getting feedback, these become possible. Or, the LLMs can’t become great at all of those things, and developers keep their jobs (and high pay). You can’t have it both ways.
Shocka1 3y ago
Regarding economics, this has been brought up about automation for many decades now. Humans adapt, adjust and productivity output increases to even higher levels. Yes, it may harm certain professions, careers and people, but the only option is to accept and adapt. We can talk all day and night about how sad and unfair this is, but unfortunately there is nothing stopping such technological advancements. Though a little blunt at times, the libertarian economist and journalist Henry Hazlitt talks about this in great detail in his book, Economics in One Lesson, which I highly recommend to anyone no matter what belief system. He also wrote many essays on it, including one I'll share here: https://fee.org/articles/the-curse-of-machinery/ https://fee.org/articles/the-curse-of-machinery/

torginus 3y ago

Considering how much the craft has expanded - when in high school, I wrote an application for pocket for a small business in Borland Delphi 7. The domain knowledge I needed for that was knowing the programming environment, and a bit about Windows. Nowadays, like the rest of the full-stack 'web' developers, I work on complex webapps that use Typescript, HTML, CSS, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Postgres, bash, GitHub Actions, .NET, Node, Python, AWS, Git. And that isn't even the full list. And it's not even a flex, all of the above is used by a relatively straightforward LoB app with some hairy dependencies, a CI/CD pipeline + a bit of real world messiness. I need to have at least a passing familiarity with all those technologies to put together a working application and I'm sure I'm not alone with this uphill struggle. It's a staggering amount to remember for a single person, and LLMs have been a godsend.

gitgud 3y ago

> “If AI makes developers twice as productive (maybe a few years down the road with GPT-6), will this additional supply of developer capacity get absorbed by existing and new demand? Or will there be half as many developers? Or will the same number of developers get paid far less than today?” Something to remember is that every new innovation in software development only raises the expectations of the people paying the software developers. If developers are 3x as productive, then the goals and features will be 3x big. The reason for this is that companies are in competition, if they lag behind, then others will eat up the market. The company that fires 50% of their staff because of “AI Assistance” is not going to be able to compete with the company that doesn’t fire their staff and still uses “AI Assistance”…

fauigerzigerk 3y ago
I agree that demand will very likely grow with expectations to absorb some of the additional capacity. But there is a limit to that because companies compete on more than just software. They also compete on price and on other things that have nothing to do with software. If the price of software drops, it's not a given that all of the savings will be spent more and better software.
- gitgud 3y ago
  I think if the price of software drops, then there’s a huge opportunity for smaller companies to build better products for cheaper and steal market share. So more people building software. This also means larger companies will need to build more to defend their share of the market. Meaning more people building software.
archiepeach 3y ago
I think this hits the nail on the head. Obviously a lot of the participants in this discussion are programmers, so there is going to be a fair amount of bias where people feel like their self-worth is being attacked/devalued. That being said, from a company perspective, this should much more unlock "moving faster" than "let's rest on our laurels". Any company that has a leading position in a particular industry is currently at greater risk of upstarts achieving their feature set in a reduced amount of time. The incentive for all companies will be to find programmers who are skilled in directing and debugging AIs. I am currently building an iOS app using GPT-4 (I don't know Swift), and am developing an awareness of what it can/can't do, and surprised that I'm moving at the speed I did when creating React Native apps. In a possibly more competitive future market for developers, it does work in one's favour if some developers resist the efficiency improvements of AI.
jvanderbot 3y ago
Blacksmiths didn't die, they became mechanical engineers?

rjrodger 3y ago

To me this looks like a Jevons Paradox situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox [1] Increased developer productivity will lead to a lot more software development, at all levels, rather than less. 1. "In economics, the Jevons paradox occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the falling cost of use induces increases in demand enough that resource use is increased, rather than reduced."

fauigerzigerk 3y ago
Yes, demand grows as prices drop. I don't doubt this general principle for a second. But the question is about degrees. If the cost of making software at today's level of quality and quantity drops by half, what share of the savings is going to be spent on more and better software, what share is going to be spent on other things and what share will be used to cut prices? I think there is no general answer to this question. What would Netflix do if software development costs dropped by half? Develop twice as much software? Spend it on more content? Cut the price of subscriptions? In this specific case, my bet would be on content.
- renlo 3y ago
  To me software _is_ content because it's tied to attention and consumption. There will always be humans producing it and consuming it, it isn't a limited resource that goes away once a tool comes along to make it easier to produce. If the costs halve, then more is produced.
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
Let's not forget that reduced cotton prices (because of a technological improvement) did make cotton more affordable, lots of new clothes at reduced prices, increased demand, but it didn't turn out that great for the slaves.
- delecti 3y ago
  The relevant aspect of what you're referencing is that it led to more slaves. For more than a decade, software developers have easily been able to get low 6 figure jobs right out of college. We're pretty far from slaves.

victorbjorklund 3y ago

It is way "easier" to be productive as a developer today vs 20 years ago. I can easily build web apps fast that would have taken a big team to build if even possible. Yet, more devs today than 20 years ago. If every dev is suddenly 20 times more productive (however that would be measured) means that some projects that in the past would not be "profitable"/"worth it" are now no brainers and companies will invest in doing those projects.

singhrac 3y ago

I’m very bullish. My dad and I were talking about this the other day, but there are still so many quality-of-life improvements that are bottlenecked by not having enough developers or enough time. For example, deploying hardware to all subways to track their status and location with higher accuracy. I want a truly smart meal planner that can look in my fridge and my eating habits and tell me what I need to eat. I want a little plugin for Obsidian that will let me sync tasks with Linear. There are tons of tiny little pieces of technology that would be useful but their economic value is low or unclear; if developers become more efficient at not only writing code but testing, deploying, getting feedback, these become possible. Or, the LLMs can’t become great at all of those things, and developers keep their jobs (and high pay). You can’t have it both ways.

Shocka1 3y ago

Regarding economics, this has been brought up about automation for many decades now. Humans adapt, adjust and productivity output increases to even higher levels. Yes, it may harm certain professions, careers and people, but the only option is to accept and adapt. We can talk all day and night about how sad and unfair this is, but unfortunately there is nothing stopping such technological advancements. Though a little blunt at times, the libertarian economist and journalist Henry Hazlitt talks about this in great detail in his book, Economics in One Lesson, which I highly recommend to anyone no matter what belief system. He also wrote many essays on it, including one I'll share here: https://fee.org/articles/the-curse-of-machinery/ https://fee.org/articles/the-curse-of-machinery/