[bigbones]

Based on what I've seen so far, I'm thinking a timeline more like 5-10 years where anything involving at least frontend has all but evaporated. What value is there in having a giant app team grind for 2 years on the perfect Android app when a user can simply ask for the display they want, and 5 variants of it until they are happy, all in a couple of seconds while sitting in the back of a car. What happens to all the hundreds of UI frameworks when a system as a widespread as Android adopts a technology approach like this?

Backend is significantly murkier, there are many tasks it seems unlikely an AI will accomplish any time soon (my toy example so far is inventing and finalizing the next video compression standard). But a lot of the complexity in backend derives from supporting human teams with human styles of work, and only exists due to the steady cashflow generated by organizations extracting tremendous premiums to solve problems in their particular style. I have no good way to explain this - what value is a $500 accounting system backend if models get good enough at reliably spitting out bespoke $15 systems with infinite customizations in a few seconds for a non-developer user, and what of all the technologies whose maintenance was supported by the cashflows generated by that $500 system?

[tehjoker]

These don't sound like the kinds of problems programmers solve. Users don't want to customize their UI (well some do), they want a UI that is adapted to their needs. They only want to customize it when it doesn't meet their needs (for example, if a corporation tries to use addicting features or hide things they need to increase engagement).

Accounting software has to be validated, and part of the appeal is that it simplified and consolidates workflows across huge bureaucracies. I don't see how on earth you can just spit one out from a prompt and expect that to replace anything.

I work on a compression algorithm myself, and I've found AI of limited utility. It does help me translate things for interfacing between languages and it can sometimes help me try out ideas, but I have to write almost everything myself.

EDIT: It is true, that lower skilled jobs are going to change or reduce in quantity in the short term. To a certain degree there might be a Jevon's paradox in terms of code quantity that needs management.

Imagine companies churning out tons and tons of code that no one understands that behaves bizzarely. Maybe it will become a boutique thing for companies to have code that works properly and people will just accept broken user interfaces or whatever so long as there are workarounds.