> that's when they'll have to contend with the blood, sweat, and tears.
Or, most software will become immutable. You'll just replace it.
You'll throw away the mess, and let a newer LLM build a better version in a couple of days. You ask the LLM to write down the specs for the newer version based on the old code.
If that is true, then the crowd that is not brave enough to do AI-first will just be left behind.
Do we really want that? To be beholden to the hands of a few?
Hell, you can't even purchase a GPU with high enough VRAM these days for an acceptable amount of money. In part because of geopolitics. I wonder how many morerestrictions are there to come.
There's a lot of FOMO going around, those honing their programming skills will continue to thrive, and that's a guarantee. Don't become a vassal when you can be a king.
The scenario you paint sounds very implausible for non-trivial applications, but even if it ends up becoming the development paradigm, I doubt anyone will be "left behind" as such. People will have time to re-skill. The question is whether some will ever want to or would prefer to take up woodworking.
Whether one takes up woodworking or not depends on whether or not development was primarily for profit, with little to not intrinsic enjoyment of the role.
Coding and woodworking are similiar from my perspective, they are both creative arts. I like coding in different lanuages, woodworking is simply a physical manifestion of such. In a world where you only need agents, is not a world where nerds will be employed. Traditional nerds cant stand out from the crowd anymore.
This is peak AI, it only goes downhill from here in terms of quality, the AI first flows will be replaceable. Those offshored teams that we have suffered with for years now will be primarly replaced (google first programmers). And developers will continue, working around the edges. The differences will be that startups wont be able to use technology horading to stifle competition, unless they make themselves immune from the ai vacumes.
I can appreciate the comments further up around how AI can help unravel the mysterys of a legacy codebase. Being able to ask questions about code in quick succession will mean that we will feel more confident. AI is lossy, hard to direct, yet very confident always. We have 10k line functions in our legacy code that nests and nest. How confident are you to let ai go and refactor this code without oversight and ship to a customer? Thus far im not, maybe i dont know the best model and tools to use and how to apply them, but even if one of those logic branches gets hallucinated im in for a very bumpy ride. Watching non-technical people at my org get frusted and stuck with it in a loop is a lot more common then the successes which seem to be the opposite of the experienced engineers who use it as a tool, not a savour. But every situation is different.
If you think you company can be a differentiator in the market because it has access to the same AI tool as every other company? We'll well see about that. I believe there has to be more.
Im an experienced engineer of 30+yrs. Technology comes and goes. AI is just a another tool in the chest. I use it primarily because i dont have to deal with ads. I also use it to be a electrical engineer, designing circuts in areas i am not familiar with. I can see very simply the noivce side of the coin, it feels like you have super powers because you just dont know enough about the subject to be aware of anything else. Its sped up the learning cycle considerably beacause of the conversational nature. After a few years of projects, i know how to ask better questions to get better results.
That's like saying "I'll just burn down my house because I can replace it. Anyone who repairs their house will be left behind."
It's true, you can replace it, so I can't put my finger on what has been stopping people from burning their houses down instead of, say, spring cleaning
If that is true, then the crowd that is not brave enough to do AI-first will just be left behind.
Not even, devoured might be more apt. If I'm manually moving through this valley and a flood is coming through, those who are sticking automatic propellers and navigation systems on their ship are going to be the ones that can surf the flood and come out of the valley. We don't know, this is literally the adventure. I'm personally on the side of a hybrid approach. It's fun as hell, best of luck to everyone.
It's in poor taste to bring up this example, but I'll mention it as softly as I can. There were some people that went down looking for the Titanic recently. It could have worked, you know what I mean? These are risks we all take.
Quoting the Admiral from Starcraft Broodwars cinematic (I'm a learned person):
> It's in poor taste to bring up this example, but I'll mention it as softly as I can. There were some people that went down looking for the Titanic recently. It could have worked, you know what I mean?
Not sure if you drew the right conclusion from that one.
Or, most software will become immutable. You'll just replace it.
You'll throw away the mess, and let a newer LLM build a better version in a couple of days. You ask the LLM to write down the specs for the newer version based on the old code.
If that is true, then the crowd that is not brave enough to do AI-first will just be left behind.