[apeace]

The job of "software engineer" as we know it will end.

Before the industrial revolution, shoemakers would make shoes. It was a specialized skill, meaning shoes were very expensive, so most people couldn't afford them.

Then factories were invented. Now shoes could be made cheaply and quickly, by machines, so more people could afford them. This meant that far more people could be employed in the shoe industry.

But those people were no longer shoemakers. Shoemakers were wiped out overnight.

Think of how huge the shoe industry is now. There are jobs ranging from factory worker to marketing manager. But there are zero shoemakers.

AI writing software doesn't mean it's the end of the industry. Humanity will benefit greatly, just like we did from getting cheaper shoes.

But the software engineers are screwed.

[bamboozled]

But those people were no longer shoemakers. Shoemakers were wiped out overnight.

Have you seen the cost and popularity of "Made in X" handmade boots though? Red Wing, Origin, Red Back. It's absolutely crazy

The difference is, all of a sudden we could make a lot of CHEAP shoes and yes I'm sure it wiped out a lot of shoe maker jobs, but there is still a lot of good shoe makers around and there is still a high demand for handmade shoes and boots.

[senordevnyc]

Shoemaking is an interesting analogy, and it brings to mind a few other facts that might be relevant. I have zero experience in the industry of shoemaking, so these are my impressions, they could be wrong:

1. There are still many thousands of people in the US alone employed today as traditional shoemakers at boutique firms. It's a very niche career, but it does exist.

2. As the cost of shoes plummeted and our ability to create more complex designs exploded, we also got a huge proliferation of innovation and creativity in shoe design.

3. Yes, today's shoe industry has lots of factory workers and marketing managers...but it also has many tens of thousands of more specialized roles like shoe designers, materials specialists, process automation engineers, etc.

I can see a future where software is almost entirely created by AI, but we have many specialized roles of people who know how to apply AI tools to software creation, or who sit in the interface between the business and the AI in some way that it's hard to foresee now.

On the flip side, if we truly get ASI, then it is hard to see what exactly those specialized roles represent that can't be replaced.

What does Sam Altman do that an ASI won't be able to?

[QuiDortDine]

The shoe comparison is ridiculous. For let's say 99% of people, shoe requirements are the same (in function), with almost all variations being purely esthetic. There are, let's say, 10 kinds of shoes, or perhaps 100. Make it a thousand, for argument's sake.

Meanwhile, every single business has different workflows and therefore different needs. The most common ones (browsers, etc.) are answered by traditional software. If you can write in detail the business needs as pertaining to workflows - business rules, let's call them - you've effectively made the software already. The only difference being that telling ChatGPT to do something in English and telling the computer to do it in code is that one is non-deterministic.

Software is, primarily, a means to process information, which is to say reality (in a business setting). An AI that can replace software developers can, in effect, replace every job that happens on a computer, in every company on Earth. Apart from Jevon's paradox (which is much more applicable to software than shoes), this shift would be so gargantuan that it's barely worth thinking about, in the same way that it's not worth thinking about a supervolcanic eruption: the consequences would be earth-shattering, and finding employment would be the least of your worries.

[apeace]

To add to this: the author is missing a major aspect of the Jevons paradox.

They keep referencing "more efficient software developers," but the Jevons paradox isn't only about efficiency. The efficiency creates lower cost, which in turn increases demand.

The main cost of software is software engineers. It's a specialized skill, so it's a high-salary job.

With AI doing most of the work, salaries will begin to fall. It will no longer make sense to study computer science, or spend years learning to code, for such a low salary. There will no longer be people doing what we call software engineering today.

So the author is right, Jevons paradox will take effect. But like I said above, it will replace the current industry with a very different-looking industry.

[squishington]

I really don't see AI generating safe code for automotive embedded systems that is maintainable and MISRA and HIS compliant. And there will need to be software engineers who are trained to debug these systems.

[nunez]

Tons of shoemakers exist! And not unlike cheap AI swill, the best shoes are handmade by them .