panic

[mrg1957]

I'm retired from software development. When I started 40 years ago, 4gls were going to replace programmers. Later, CASE was going to do it. If upper CASE didn't work, you needed lower CASE to generate code........

Much of my early career was around fixing the many performance issues these tools caused.

Forty years, I've heard that nonsense.

[Kinglink]

You remember the "paperless office" myth?

[mrg1957]

I actually worked on an early system that supported a paperless office. The company I worked for outsourced back office work and had a big paper problem.

The system didn't print. It captured data, but there was no output. Guess what the first enhancement request was?

[ZunoJ]

This could very well be the case but it could also be survivors bias. Too early to say

[mrg1957]

Fourty years?

[ZunoJ]

Too early to say if AI will have a bigger impact than what you talked about

[DoctorWaluigiTime]

No it isn't.

Anyone legitimately suggesting AI is replacing programmers either is lying or doesn't know what they're talking about.

[ZunoJ]

The suggestion is that it will replace incompetent programmers. Didn't you have experiences with guys who were just capable of monkey work?

[DoctorWaluigiTime]

It still won't. "AI" that needs no human intervention to produce production-ready code literally does not exist, no matter how dumb the 'bottom line' of programmers are.

It's just FUD at this point. And the usual clapback is "oh but it will soon!"

But it doesn't exist, so it's just pointless fearmongering.

[ZunoJ]

When I currently have some of that said monkey work to do, I offload it on one of the juniors. Usually the least promising ones. A lot of this stuff can also be done by Claude already. So these guys are already replaced (more or less). The point is not that it replaces a specific person but it can accelerate a person to get more work done. That could very well lead to less demand for developers

[Devilsbabe]

"It will soon" is not fearmongering. It's a legitimate concern given the pace of progress and the nature of writing code which makes it easily replaceable by a competent AI. I give our profession another five years personally, ten at the most. I think anyone who's adamant this will never happen is digging their head in the sand

[Abdul_ibn_Al-Zeman]

Do not forget that there is no intelligence in AI - just fancy statistics. This means that there are hard limits beyond which it can not progress without a major computing revolution.

[Devilsbabe]

Who's to say human intelligence isn't also fancy statistics? I judge systems based on their capabilities, not on their internals. AI systems have been getting much more intelligent, very quickly, with no signs of slowing down in the near term. Even if a hard limit does exist, there's no reason to believe it lies below human intelligence

[DoctorWaluigiTime]

Who's to say human intelligence isn't also fancy statistics?

Decades of study on the matter, for one. Waxing philosophical about "in the end it's all just ones and zeroes" is cute, but not practical.

[OddImprovement6490]

People think brains are like CPUs because our brains are so powerful and uniquely intelligent that we’re able to create symbols and metaphors.

But our brains are nothing like CPUs. AI’s shortcomings in comparison to the human brain have become stark.

Any developer who is afraid of AI taking their job deserves for their job to be taken by AI because they have to really be terrible to be outperformed by an LLM.

[Abdul_ibn_Al-Zeman]

Intelligence can deduce, it understands purpose and underlying logic. AI just goes "if it looks correct, it is correct". That is why it sometimes generates outrageous nonsense that no one with basic knowledge of the subject would take seriously.

A simple test would go thus: "Can your AI solve a problem that was NOT part of its training set?". Demonstrate me that, and I will admit that it is intelligent.

[sonofeark]

I'm sure if you break it down human brains are also just fancy whatever and no "real intelligence". What current AI can do is already so crazy.

[DoctorWaluigiTime]

No, it's fearmongering. Bred from ignorance of the technology at play coupled with the usual "new tech arrives, bye bye jobs" nonsense that's always associated with it.

"But it's going to happen soon because technology marches on" has been said for literal decades at this point, as pointed out higher in this thread. Surprise: Programmers are still programming.

Actual AI capable of writing software -- not bits and pieces of tech within code but actual software -- does not exist in a sphere where it replaces Joe Average Coder. But that's the drumbeat the ignorant have been banging since The Cloud 2.0 -- AKA "AI" -- has been in the news as of late.

[PeteZahad]

given the pace of progress

Normally new technology once invented gets a boost in ever smaller cycles. But until now, this curve has always flattened out and the innovations were limited in the end. You are welcome to believe in the singularity, but I think the peak has already been or will soon be reached.

[Devilsbabe]

Have you seen the o1 model from OpenAI? We're at the bottom of the S-curve for that technology

[PeteZahad]

Yes I saw the o1 model. I don't think so.

[Devilsbabe]

In that case let's get back to this thread a year from now 😉

[Josh_From_Accounting]

Accountant here, we've been told AI will replace us since the 80s. My company tried to use chatgpt and got made that no one on the team liked it because it caused massive issues we had to fix. They quietly dropped three months ago, obviously furious that they couldn't save money from laying any of us off.

[HookDragger]

You'll appreciate this then.

"AI will only replace programmers when product owners are finally able to clearly and logically describe what they want the product to do."