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Prompt Engineering! I'm kidding. Software engineering roles of the "glue things together" kind will evolve into a 'technical product' role, defining how system

Prompt Engineering! I'm kidding. Software engineering roles of the "glue things together" kind will evolve into a 'technical product' role, defining how systems work, especially at the edges where systems interact. Architects and staff engineers already do this. Lower down the food chain engineers who actually invent new things will do the same, only quicker if they have an AI tool assisting with the grunt work of testing, boilerplate, etc. Engineers who don't really make new things will be replaced by 'low code' style apps that spit out clunky apps. That's already happening though. It's not a change. Those engineers won't leave the industry - they'll get to do more interesting things. Even at the entry level things won't really change that much. Expectations will go up a bit but people will still have to learn the trade. Where things will really change is the sheer amount of software we'll have. AI is going to make things go faster, so businesses will be able to automate everything. Dev resource will stop being the constraint that holds businesses back from doing everything they want to do with software. That's a game changer. Society will struggle to keep up.

fhd2 3y ago
Good take! I think one specific development we might see would be an end of the SaaS micro tool era. Right now, most companies I advise have an absolute _jungle_ of different tools and a bunch of interns manually bridging the gap between them. If software development becomes a lot cheaper, wouldn't companies be more likely to just roll their own versions of what they need, to meet their needs exactly and have everything fit together? Sounds like the job of a programmer wouldn't go away very near term in such a scenario. It might well become far less glamorous, less "technical", and not as well paid though. Comparable to an accountant maybe. As someone who started their career right after the dotcom bubble burst, various people asked me "Why are you doing this? There's no money in software anymore". Turns out there sure was. Back then I didn't know that, and I didn't care. I didn't get into it for the money, I got into it because I had a passion for it. Maybe it'll become more like back then again. Doesn't seem so bad to me.
- onion2k 3y ago
  I think one specific development we might see would be an end of the SaaS micro tool era. Possibly, but if SaaS tool providers make APIs so AI tools can consume the data, that would open up a huge ecosystem of AI 'plugins' that would be immensely valuable. I think OpenAI have something like that already.
  - fhd2 3y ago
    Could be! Most SaaS tools I can think of cover some specific work flow in a way that it kinda works for 80% of the customers. Their UI is quite an intrinsic part of the offering, an API-only version of it wouldn't be as valuable. But if nobody has to put up with only getting 80% of their needs met, why would they? I'd imagine we'd have a few very general purpose systems that can indeed be glued together in a largely automated fashion. But getting the business processes into them in a meaningful way would then be the hard part, the programming. I can encourage everyone to read good old "Domain Driven Design", there's a world of interesting problems and work out there beyond the purely technical side of things. And I think that part is a lot more difficult to automate than creating a WordPress site from a .psd.
A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
<< Society will struggle to keep up. Thank you for putting this into words as it happens to approach my thoughts on it. Our societies are already changing at a crazy pace that makes people not entirely comfortable. Now that this comfort will be lessened still, do you think people will demand changes not completely dissimilar from preserving horse buggys? The pace of change may end up being so fast, that not artificially limiting it may end up pissing a good portion of the planet.

fhd2 3y ago

Good take! I think one specific development we might see would be an end of the SaaS micro tool era. Right now, most companies I advise have an absolute _jungle_ of different tools and a bunch of interns manually bridging the gap between them. If software development becomes a lot cheaper, wouldn't companies be more likely to just roll their own versions of what they need, to meet their needs exactly and have everything fit together? Sounds like the job of a programmer wouldn't go away very near term in such a scenario. It might well become far less glamorous, less "technical", and not as well paid though. Comparable to an accountant maybe. As someone who started their career right after the dotcom bubble burst, various people asked me "Why are you doing this? There's no money in software anymore". Turns out there sure was. Back then I didn't know that, and I didn't care. I didn't get into it for the money, I got into it because I had a passion for it. Maybe it'll become more like back then again. Doesn't seem so bad to me.

onion2k 3y ago
I think one specific development we might see would be an end of the SaaS micro tool era. Possibly, but if SaaS tool providers make APIs so AI tools can consume the data, that would open up a huge ecosystem of AI 'plugins' that would be immensely valuable. I think OpenAI have something like that already.
- fhd2 3y ago
  Could be! Most SaaS tools I can think of cover some specific work flow in a way that it kinda works for 80% of the customers. Their UI is quite an intrinsic part of the offering, an API-only version of it wouldn't be as valuable. But if nobody has to put up with only getting 80% of their needs met, why would they? I'd imagine we'd have a few very general purpose systems that can indeed be glued together in a largely automated fashion. But getting the business processes into them in a meaningful way would then be the hard part, the programming. I can encourage everyone to read good old "Domain Driven Design", there's a world of interesting problems and work out there beyond the purely technical side of things. And I think that part is a lot more difficult to automate than creating a WordPress site from a .psd.

A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago

<< Society will struggle to keep up. Thank you for putting this into words as it happens to approach my thoughts on it. Our societies are already changing at a crazy pace that makes people not entirely comfortable. Now that this comfort will be lessened still, do you think people will demand changes not completely dissimilar from preserving horse buggys? The pace of change may end up being so fast, that not artificially limiting it may end up pissing a good portion of the planet.