Submitted 9 months ago by bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
I found this thought funny. A few years ago everyone was all learn to code so you don’t lose your job! Now there wont be any programming jobs in 10 years. But we will need a lot of manual labor still.
More like there’ll be more coding jobs because of how fucked up LLM-coding can be
Well my knee is injured for the past 3 weeks and counting so I don’t think I’m going to be doing any manual labor any time soon, I think I’m going to keep at my work from home programming job instead.
LLMs can recite code when asked properly, with a lot of errors. Trying to put code together with it without understanding how said code works is a greater insanity, than making random numbers with mathematics.
The real reason why there’s a downtick in coding jobs is due to Xitter not imploding immediately after the mass firings. Now coders are working overtime with skeleton teams on the same problems, while being overburdened and making more mistakes.
I think the post is about the state of agentic coders in 10 years, not the present.
I think AI is a component of the decline.
For decades, companies have operated under the misunderstanding that more software developers equals more success, despite countless works explaining that’s not how it works. As a result many of these companies have employed an order of magnitude more than they probably should have and got worse results than they would have. However the fact they got subpar results with 10x a good number just convinced them that they didn’t hire enough. Smaller team produce better results made zero sense.
So now the AI companies come along and give a plausible rationalization to decrease team size. Even if the LLM hypothetically does zero to provide direct value, the reduced teams start yielding better results, because of mitigating the problems of “make sure everyone is utilized, make sure these cheap unqualified offshored programmers are giving you value, communicate and plan, reach consensus along a set up people who might all have viable approaches, but development into arguments over which way to go”.
AI gives then a rationalization to do what they should have done from the onset.
Now there wont be any programming jobs in 10 years.
Bullshit.
Hes not wrong. Amazon for example is getting rid of SDE roles for AI as per leaked conversation from the head of AWS.
Its coming anyone who thinks other wise will have a surprise pikachu face.
The real answer is somewhere in between.
There’s going to be less programming jobs, but there’s still always going to be some demand for them, there’s always going to be some technical knowledge required, even if just “prompt engineers” or similar concepts. Things still need to be built, and if you’ve worked for enough project managers/product managers, you know their lack of technical knowledge would not be enough to even prompt an LLM much less do anything else.
While “any” is a bit much, I do anticipate a rather dramatic decline.
One is that there are a large chunk of programming jobs that I do think LLM can displace. Think of those dumb unimaginative mobile games that bleed out a few dollars a week from folks. I think LLM has a good chance at cranking those out. If you’ve seen companies that have utterly trivial yet somehow subtly unique internal applications, LLMs can probably crank out a lot of those to. There’s a lot of stupid trivial stuff that has been done a million times before that still gets done by people.
Another is that a lot of software teams have overhired anyway. Business folk think more developers mean better results, so they want to hire up to success, as long as their funding permits. This isn’t how programming really works, but explanations that fewer people can do more than more people in some cases can’t crack through how counter-intuitive that is. AI offers a rationalization for a lot of those folks to finally arrive at the efficient conclusion.
Finally, the software industry has significantly converted transactional purchases to subscription. With perpetual license, you needed to provide some value to drive that customer who bought from you 5 years ago a reason to upgrade. Now with subscription models, you just have to coast and keep the lights on for those customers. Often with effective lock-in of the customers data to make it extra hard or impossible for them to jump to a competitor, even if competitors could reverse-engineer your proprietary formats, the customer might not even be able to download their actual data files. So a company that acheived “good enough” with subscription might severely curtail investment because it makes no difference to their bottom line if they are delivering awesome new capability or just same old same old. Anticipate a log of stagnation as they shuffle around things like design language to give a feeling of progress while things just kinda plateau out.
With perpetual license, you needed to provide some value to drive that customer who bought from you 5 years ago a reason to upgrade. Now with subscription models, you just have to coast and keep the lights on for those customers.
True, but it’sa pendulum. It swings back and forth.
Companies that try to charge monthly for service that isn’t improving eventually lose their customers, except in the rare cases where stability is the only customer motivation.
Trades were being pushed 20 years ago
But programming is a good supplemental skill in every field
Yes! As Heinlein wrote - “Specialization is for insects.” Any human can benefit from any skill in any of the trade skills and programming, too.
The reactionary “learn to code” nonsense started a lot further back than a few years! Also, who told you there won’t be any software development positions in 10 years?
Anthropic for starters. What they don’t realize is everyone will be switching to cyber security jobs in 10 years when every vibe coded piece of software is riddle with security vulnerabilities.
Anthropic and others are over hyping their product so they can sell it. They are likely wrong.
And yeah your point stands.
If quantum computers become a standard thing in 10 years it could be even worse.
I can think of no better way to train an AI to hate humanity enough to invent Skynet and kill us all, than to introduce them to MS Teams meetings with managers who all want things that are completely incompatible with what they asked for the last time, and require you to throw away about 40% of what you already wrote.
If machine intelligence is indeed a different form of intelligence, then it can be observed and judged on the basis of its own merits, as opposed to a messianic waiting for a moment where it might equal or eclipse (weakly defined) human intelligence. This would even render obsolete the question as to whether or not machines can think—which in itself willfully glosses over the corresponding opposite question, “Can humans think?” posed by the former Fluxus artist (and Emmett Williams collaborator) Tomas Schmit in the year 2000 (Schmit et al. 2007, 18–19). — Crapularity Hermeneutics: Interpretation as the Blind Spot of Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and Other Algorithmic Producers of the Postapocalyptic Present. Florian Cramer.
Just in time to finish your uni degree which you started 3 years ago then…
No wonder business is complaining that uni grads are so unprepared and lost.
In fairness, we’ve been complaining about university graduate computer programmers being nearly useless since as far back as when I was an almost useless university graduate computer programmer. Ha ha.
the only job that can’t be replaced is… venture capital guy
The ai that’s been trained specifically to predict trends: ;3
Remember when Biden told coal miners to learn to code
“My liberal friends were saying, ‘You can’t expect them to be able to do that,’” Biden told his New Hampshire audience. “Gimme a break! Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program for God’s sake.”
These politicians and policy makers don’t know what they talk about when it comes to tech. Any one who tells you that programming jobs will be gone because of AI has never written a complex piece of software before. Also the trades pay well because there is a shortage of workers. If everyone starts going into the trades wages will crater. It’s just cycles. I remember when nobody wanted to go into the trades because it didn’t pay well. This created the shortage of workers. And since salaries are better now because of the shortage lots of people want to go into the trades This will create an oversupply of tradespeople and the cycle will repeat.
Part of me wants to argue this isn’t a cycle of demand and is instead capitalism. The trades didn’t pay poorly because there were too many people as much as people willing to work for less and the employer will pocket the difference. I admit this is extremely pedantic of me to split hairs here but people have an effective floor for how much they can work for. Coal miners weren’t being told to code because there were too many coal miners but that they could never work for as little as the machines that were replacing them.
To be clear I’m not saying AI is a replacement for programmers, I’m not able to see the future here, but capitalists will attempt to to replace any labor with machines if possible.
Building trades are hell on your body and there is no goddamn way that any construction worker (Electrician, carpenter, plumber, pipefitter, mason etc) can last until SS age-- esp. as they are planning to raise it to 70.
It’s two quotes. Miners don’t throw coal into furnaces.
My liberal friends were saying, ‘You can’t expect them to be able to do that,’” Biden told his New Hampshire audience. “Anybody who can go down 300 to 3,000 feet in a mine, sure in hell can learn to program as well, but we don’t think of it that way,” he said.
“Gimme a break! Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program for God’s sake.”
I work in software development but I also have a second job as an arborists offsider because I’m pretty sure trees will never stop fucking growing.
It really IS ridiculous. I even took a beginners coding class in high school. In the end, we will always needs programmers so if coding is your thing, keep doing it.
But I would personally rather construct a small home with my bare hands than learn to properly program. (I am not good at it…haha)
The neat thing about most jobs is you don’t have to be good at them to get paid.
This also applies to your manager and coworkers though.
That’s the key point I reckon “if coding is your thing” many people are trying to learn a complex thing they have no interest in.
Yes! I met someone who had no passion for programming, but just did it for the paycheck, but also had not reached a particularly good paycheck.
I asked, “If you have no passion for it, what carries you through the soul crushing aspects?”
And now he and I don’t talk about programming, anymore.
Lol anyone who thinks you don’t need any programmer in 10 years of time will burn and crash in the next few years when finally realizing that AI isnt as intelligent as we’re being sold.
Good luck trying to troubleshoot the code AI wrote tho.
The Learn To Code hype was being driven by employers to create a work surplus to drive wages down. Now those same employers think they can use AI instead.
then it’s going to inadvertently happen to the trades too 😬
Any new construction job is going to crash because no one will have any money to build new anymore. I’m already seeing stalled projects new me. Not that I have a big problem with that. They like to cut down and cleared trees to build a warehouse instead of tearing down old buildings.
Construction jobs? Buddy. We can 3D print houses now.
That’s right. I’ve seen 3d printed houses that were every bit as complete and ready to use as any vibe code program!
(This is sarcasm, since both are cool and useful for an actual professional, while useless to anyone not willing or able to actually finish the job.)
You can 3D print a concrete hull with limited structural strength. All the rest still needs to be done by humans.
Also you could achieve the same effect in terms of manpower required for the structure just using prefabricated concrete modules.
Yet it’s not a popular way to do it, and multiple company closed after a few years of operating.
Someone still have to assemble it.
That’s what the 3D printer is doing.
I remain deeply skeptical that AI can solve the types of complex problems that require human thought. AIs will never be able to abstract away details correctly or design sensible workflows for boutique problems.
AIs will never be able to abstract away details correctly or design sensible workflows for boutique problems.
Not the current direction of AI, no. But the field is ever advancing. I won’t be shocked if we see AI capable of these things within my lifetime.
A lot of the things that current “AI” is doing exist since the 90s or even earlier. It is just that now the computational capacity is big enough to make much more complex looking inputs and results.
The problems start if it can take on a lot of the junior work. If nobody can enter the industry, nobody can get the experience required to do the real engineering.
Open-source and personal work may be the only way to enter the programming field in the next decade.
Now is the worst time to try to enter the field. We need to see the AI bubble burst much more spectacularly, and only then might it be more reasonable. You certainly don’t want to try to get into a field when you have a lot of other choices when that field is already flooded with all of these people who have been laid off, combined with the increased availability of programmers in other countries, knowing that at the moment many domestic programmers are not smart enough to form strong unions to protect their own jobs.
They can’t, this is the same shit that happened when the dipshit ceos sent dev jobs over seas to code farms. Devs lost their jobs, and the code went to shit. Then when shit started breaking, they magically rehired everyone again to spend years cleaning up the shit code. LLMs are this all over again, just quicker this time.
See, if you were really smart, you’d learn how to engineer software to construct things. 😌
That’s a pretty interesting field!
Surprisingly (considering everyone’s fears of being replaced) - software engineering for construction is rarely profitable.
The demand is surprisingly low for computers and robots that can replace low paid humans.
It turns out there’s a metric ton of us humans around, so any replacement for us usually needs to be economical in ways that won’t pay for the necessary metal and plastic and circuits and engineering skill.
The two things are related
I think there’s a massive oversupply of software engineers world-wide, and investors and executives are heavily pushing offshoring to countries where there are even more engineers that are even more desperate to find work. The ideology or focus of the entire US investor/executive class seems to have shifted as soon as Musk gutted Twitter. I fear this may be another, “these jobs aren’t coming back,” kind of thing the manufacturing industry went through. Perhaps we’ll see a boom of bootstrapped start-ups ran by engineers (or preferably worker-cooperatives), but that’s extremely hard to do.
Typical pork cycle. By the time everybody was pushed towards IT/Coding and all the hundred ways to get into IT popped up, there were already too many people wanting an IT job. You were basically called stupid if you didn’t “just learn to code” to get a well paid, stable job. It’s your own fault for chosing a manual labor job instead of applying yourself and learning some coding skills! So everybody was pushed towards IT and made to feel stupid if they didn’t try to learn coding.
Learn code anyway. LLMs can’t code worth a shit, so there will be plenty of jobs available to clean up their mess.
LLMs can’t code worth a shit yet. But techbros are determined to change that. The sad reality is that code is just a form of language, and LLMs are good at learning languages. They can’t code worth shit right now, but the progress likely will improve them.
We’ll still need experienced debuggers who can actually code. But in a decade, the broad strokes will likely be done by LLMs, which will vastly shrink the demand for experienced coders.
Learning a language and forming and expressing complex thoughts in an efficient way are three different things.
Learning the syntax of a programming language doesn’t make you a programmer.
Being able to solve complex problems with the programming language makes you a programmer.
Being able to solve complex problems with the programming language in an efficient way makes you a good programmer.
Lmfao the hardest part of building a product is understanding customer wants and needs. LLMs are incapable of understanding
The sad reality is that code is just a form of language, and LLMs are good at learning languages.
This is debatable. LLMs are prediction machines.
What use is prediction when you are trying to code something new?
Well, anyone who knows anything about the current iteration of AI knows that it’s not really happening.
Btw, people have been saying that since GPT-3 (which everyone nowadays admits was kinda shit if it wasn’t for the novelty), so only 5 years left until my career is over.
Yeah sorry that’s my fault. I literally started to learn to code 2 months before all the articles started… Then all the YouTube videos were “no one will ever hire JR devs again!” and so I stopped. Since I’ve stopped it looks like the consensus has gone back to “learning to code is still a good idea.”
I’ll let other people enjoy a good life, so I won’t try to learn it again and ruin it for everyone lol
It is, it was and it will be a good idea. If you like coding, learn it.
Definitely longer than 3 years but yeah. I saw the writing on the wall when I chose a major and realized they’d been pushing “learn to code!” For about 10 years at that point.
Not that deciding to study humanities was any better financially lol, but at least it didn’t pigeonhole me with a hard-skills education
I’m fairly sure the “learn to code” thing was just a media campaign by corporations to assure an abundance of programmers, leading to decreased labor rates. Years earlier it was a push for electronic engineers and technicians.
I have a great deal of job security by not being a software engineer and knowing “how to code”
they love me at my job in supply chain b2b marketing because I can build an API connector to the DoT database, and build a simple savings calculator in WordPress that connects to hubspot and Salesforce, or I can parse 20 csvs and exclude all duplicates in python…
all low level stuff but if you don’t know what a variable even is it seems like magic
It might be a little unintuitive, but that’s actually called “high level” - “low level” is the exact opposite.
seems like magic
Hey dawg, it’s bad practice to use magic vars or nums
As soon as I graduated, ‘too many people are fighting for IT jobs, depressing salaries, meanwhile we’re paying plumbers $100/hour.’
That was 2001. Almost 25 years later, I recently paid a plumber $300/hour.
You paid the plumbing company $300/hour. The plumber would be lucky to make $30 of that.
The code will break and they will be back. People are buying into the bullshit until they realize its just marketing and has no practical application
Doubtful. The oligarch class only needs a handful of good developers to make working code for rich people use. The rest of us are being stuck with half-assed AI slop. They’re trying to carve 99% of us out of the economy (the parts that pertain to them) and relegate us to backbreaking wage slavery. Killing middle class jobs is the point, they think.
Not saying it’s a good plan, but it sure looks like what they’re trying to do.
That is the plan. But eventually they will start dying to the same buggy hospital code that the rest of us use, or whatever other issue.
There’s a billionaire fantasy that they can afford to buy artisinal everything, and not get poisoned by the results of their own stupid callousness.
I don’t believe it. I do believe they will try, for awhile.
They’re not going to make any money selling to other rich people. They didn’t get rich buying someone else’s trash.
This is 100% what i see the plan to be as well.
Interestingly, that’s how it works for construction jobs too!
Things will break and they will be back.
mvirts@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Get a construction job so you can continue to enjoy coding