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What are devs displaced by AI going to do in the future? Is there an actual plan? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Let's assume that in 10 years, AI has advanced absurdly, insanely fast, and is now capable of doing everything a Senior SWE can do. It can program in 15 different languages, 95% accuracy with almost no mistakes, can create entire applications in minutes, and no more engineers or SWEs are needed.... What will all the devs do? Do they just become homeless? Transition to medical field, nursing? Become tradespeople like plumbers, HVAC?

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[–] 49 points 2 years ago (4 children)

That will never happen, or at least with how ai currently works. It's basically a glorified autocorrect, it uses the same technology underneath.

But presuming it does, yes. We will have to go to another industry, like AI prompting. Coding is a tiny part of professional software development.

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago

    Yes, exactly this.

    When compilers came along, some people honestly thought it would dumb down programming so much that anyone could do it.

    When high level programming languages came along, they rejoiced again - now finally anyone can make software.

    When Intellisense meat you no longer had to remember variable names, write your own imports and could guess how most libraries work, the bells rang out once again in celebration.

    And now we have AI, it's cool but really just another step like all those steps before. For me, it's a replacement for the documentation I never read anyway. I can ask an AI a stupid question rather than bothering a human developer.

    These days it's my job to manage a small team of developers - when I ask them why they wrote a stupid thing that makes no sense, 90% of the time, the answer is that an AI wrote it for them.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    Glorified autocorrect... YES! It’s a really good analogy that i will use to temper the expectation of my boss. Also: AI hallucination is just a fancy way to say ’it’s a wrong answer’.

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  • [+] [S] -12 points 2 years ago (5 children)
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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    I even used Claude AI to write an entire C# application, I did ZERO coding, yes, literally nothing! I have NEVER coded in C# before, I gave it all requirements, worked with it like a project manager.... it created a full blown working application that was beyond my expectations.

    I achieved the same in 2000 with a home grown framework, and again in 2006 with Ruby on Rails.

    Astonishingly fast prototyping is a quarter of a centrury old.

    • How are you enjoying maintaining this app in production? (Or is it not there yet, because it's just very nice for a prototype?)
    • How did Claude AI do at deploying it?
    • Are you satisfied with Claude AIs answers to your boss' traffic analytics and load balancing questions?
    • When will Claude AI let you know how the A/B tests proved out for optimizing sales?
    • Or doesn't it do those things yet?

    Computers are replacing us. They've been at it since their inception.

    Keep learning the trade and you'll find there's a metric ton more that computers cannot help with, than that they can help with. That will get better. I'm working at making it get better.

    I figure that my learning how to train the computers is job security. I didn't count on it being a harsh lesson in how long it's going to be before computers get not stupid.

    I do have a plan for when I automate myself out of a job. It's just not a plan I'm really counting on, because I've been trying for decades and I only have so many decades left of doing this.

    I've been constantly advised to have an exit plan, for when the computers replaced me, for the entirety of those same decades.

    Most often by the same people who want me to charge less.

    Funny thing, that. Take care who you listen to on this topic, and what their motives are.

    My motive is to (continue to) charge the rest of you a shit ton of money before the AI finally replace us.

    It does help me if you all don't buy into the bullshit that CEOs have been spouting about replacing us all.

    We've all been undercharging for about 3 years due to it.

    AI hasn't accomplished jack shit, but a lot of you have accepted lower pay than you probably should.

    I make very good money, but I can't help but notice that it would be a bit more, if the rest of you would wise to the scam and raise your own prices.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    Lots of my colleagues in SWE use full blown AI development tools.

    We all use full blown AI development tools. Before that we had other tricks that did the same thing.

    We must beware mistaking the instrument for the musician, or we get sold a broken old instrument that doesn't perform miracles outside it's master's hand.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    What are you using to get Claude to write for you? I've been using it to write a full stack Go/javascript app but it needs a lot of handholding.

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