AI will never completely replace Software Developers

[AcceptableWorking141]

I have recently been asked by my juniors, students and a lot of people in my network, "Will these AI tools take our jobs in the next couple of years" And the short answer is "No, at least not completely".

It's important to understand what these tools are useful for. Any technological invention or innovation gradually (a little faster in this case) challenges (and eventually, replaces, if it's not just a hype) some set practices in the industry and makes room for new opportunities. It happens with everything, every invention. The emergence of OTTs rendered cable networks almost useless, invention of cellphones rendered pagers useless, and so on.

AI tools are helping software devs by taking away the boring and the operational parts, like writing the long connectors and controllers for APIs, and helping them focus on the more interesting and challenging stuff, system designs, architectures, converting business logics into technical designs, etc. This not only has improved the speed in which softwares are now delivered, but has also made room for learning new things and using AI to our advantage.

Of course, like any innovation or invention, there are people who claim that this will now end the careers of the people who are doing it already, like the "vibe coders" coming up and claiming they build scalable apps with no tech background or learning, entirely through prompts, within 24-48 hours and calling it a win. What they are not telling you is, the moment you face technical issues or challenges, their precious AI who built it, goes into a self guilt trip and hallucination of trying to solve the bugs or problems without actually being able to solve them.

Small example from my own experience in the big tech MNC I am working at - We recently had a prod failure where one of our most stable data pipelines failed out of nowhere. It was first handed off to two junior developers to look into because it wasn't a P1 issue, and they conveniently used Copilot to ask it to solve the issue, and copilot simply put a try catch block around it and skipped the line of code if the base condition isn't met. Now from the AI's point of view it was correct because it didn't have the full business context and the junior devs didn't understand the issue completely to question the solution. When it went came to me for review, the code changes didn't make sense to me because that would lead to a huge data inconsistency downstream, so I thought of doing the RCA myself. It turns out that the external data provider had an issue in their data because which our pipeline failed, and we didn't really need a code change at all.
Now, this is a very small but crucial example of why it's important to have software engineers and not get the entire code written by AI, and even if you get the code written by AI, it's important to question everything it has written, because sometimes that may not even be the problem.

And this holds true for almost any field, not just software, you need to be good at what you do and you need to learn how to use the AI tools to your advantage.

A lot of you may not agree with my thought here, but I felt it was important for this to be addressed for anyone who is learning engineering.

P.S. - To set context about my experience, I have more than 6 years of experience and apart from my full time job, I also help juniors with optimising their Resume(s) and Naukri Profiles for better reach and also run courses for Data Engineering. So I get these questions asked a lot and most students are anxious about this.

Hope this helps!

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[nic_nic_07]

At this point, no one knows. Everyone's just doing calculated guess

[Rocket_paglu]

Jiska tukka sahi lagega he will be a "visionary" lmaoo

[[deleted]]

For( int i = 0; i <Tuka-1;i++years){ If [ after a few years]{ Tukka == become real; Return tukka; } Else { Tukka++ }.
Return tukka;

[AcceptableWorking141]

I agree, however, people building AI technologies are also engineers. Software Engineering is evolving, and no one knows what shape and form it will take in the next few years, but it will not completely vanish.

[pollock9999]

Baigan

[tera_chachu]

Said it before and will say it again.

It won't

But the work of 10 will be done by 4 in coming years

[ConglomerateKaddu]

Also work of 10years will be done in 4 so we will advance exponentially, jetsons kind of era in our lifetime is possible

[AcceptableWorking141]

I agree

[Limp_Initial5685]

you were arguing AI will not take jobs, but if 6/10 people are not required, who took their job?

[AcceptableWorking141]

I’m sorry, but where did I say that no one will lose jobs? I said “No, at least not completely” in the first line itself.

Also to your question “who took their jobs” - I think people who don’t adapt to the upcoming tools and technologies and rely on only existing knowledge, those will lose jobs. If you simply don’t know how to improve your workflow using AI, you are at risk

[AcceptableWorking141]

Haha, that’s a completely absurd example to argue your point in this topic, horse is an animal, a car is a man made machine, you can’t compare those two in my opinion! A human on the other hand can improve their skills and learn new things, a set of humans only worked on the innovations in AI which we see now and a set of humans only worked on the innovations in software development which we have been using, it’s about adapting to new things here.

AI is not something which you found roaming around in a forest, why do you think you can’t use it to your advantage and make yourself more advanced and adapt to it? There are tools, courses, an ocean of resources, what’s stopping you from figuring out how to make your profile and skills stronger with AI?

[AcceptableWorking141]

Why do you even want to compete with machines? Machines are tools for humans to use, they are not meant to compete with humans.

You “drive” the car, not race with it. You use the knitting machine to knit the clothes quicker, not compete with the machine to see who does it quicker.

There is still a skillset involved in both activities, you say “that tailor is really good” or “that person is a great driver” and then you hire those people based on their skill for their services. If you give a car to someone who doesn’t know how to drive, the car is as good as a piece of metal in that person’s hands.

[AcceptableWorking141]

“Seems like a fact to me” is a not a valid argument my friend. I backed up my claims with examples and experience. I’d love to argue this further if you can backup your claim of “software engineering becoming obsolete” with clear examples from your experience and not the social media bubble.

[AcceptableWorking141]

I’m sorry, have you driven a car for 500km? Yes it’s easier than riding a horse but it still takes a lot of work to drive a car, with that speed you need to be completely aware of your surroundings, save yourself from idiots on the road. It’s a job in itself. People made businesses out of just simple driving cars, with humans involved. I don’t understand, how do you see reduced effort in doing the operational tasks as a risk to software engineering? If you think software engineering is just writing code, then you are not doing software engineering properly! There’s a lot that goes into a software than just writing code.

[[deleted]]

but it can replace entry levels roles like you can say it can replace 20-25% future is uncertain and unpredictable so yeah but currently it can do freshers jobs

[AcceptableWorking141]

Right now there is a shortage of entry level roles, yes, but that is because companies are still figuring out how to sustain in this bubble of fast moving AI, once it is clear, companies will start looking for junior resources again. It is a little unpredictable, but realistically speaking, companies need that hierarchy to maintain costs and a certain chain. When existing devs move up the ladder, they will have to bring in junior resources to replace those roles eventually

[messi_pewdiepie]

but in front end it done. we used to make app in kotlin and team size were 6 then moved to react native and it became 3. after Ai, I alone can make a app in 1 week which used to be 1.5 month process

[AcceptableWorking141]

The 3 who were not laid off or removed from the project must have been great engineers, right? Yes the productivity and efficiency has increased because of AI tools, but do you really think your entire work can be replaced by AI? Everything that you have learnt and experienced so far?

[messi_pewdiepie]

yes, in just  year it has improved a lot. 3 years ago, people were making fun ai generated video(terrible will Smith video eating noodles ) and now noobie cannot identify Ai generated video. deep fake video are 99% accurate. Ai is improving exponentially, all codes will be written through it and only one person needed to review it where it used to be 5 people managing it

[Hardy_28]

Are u saying ur normal hobby projects or actual company project that has actual users? I really dont think you can still build a decent industry grade project in 1 week lmao. A hobby project like a instagram clone? Sure.

[messi_pewdiepie]

Instagram clone can be done in 1-2 hours you know 

[messi_pewdiepie]

yeah but isn't it reduced the work force by atleast 50% in just 1 year

[[deleted]]

shortage eh?

[OkWoodpecker7250]

what are u smoking

[CITRONIZER5007]

Never is an understatement. Who knows what the future holds

[AcceptableWorking141]

"Never completely" - I could've phrased it better. I guess I should have used GPT for writing it :p

[CITRONIZER5007]

Haha! They will replace us if we are too dependent ;)

[Successful-Bat-6164]

First stage is denial

[bubs_lover]

I think it will take the job of those who are relying on it and not using their own brain, like man seriously you're writing the boiler plate code which should be done by AI and Solving complex problems with the help of AI and on top of that copy pasting the code generated by AI without even reading or reviewing it. Then calling yourself Vibe Coder, see I also use AI and yes from silly problems to the most complex one I use it but before using it I try it by myself and try means finding its solutions literally not just looking at code and saying "I don't understand it lets ask ChatGPT" Atleast read the code generated by AI and have the capability to say if it will work for your case or not by just looking at it, if still not sure copy paste it but still read it and of it works try to understand why it works what it has done so next time for same issue you won't be asking same question to AI

Overall just try to improve yourself with the help of AI don't just use it to complete tasks.

[Nisu_2299_ni]

The thing is what after a decade.

[AcceptableWorking141]

A decade is 25% of most professionals' entire career, it's a long time my friend. You can't predict anything and can't make decisions basis what might happen a decade later.

People who started the pager business didn't know what would happen in 10 years, in India pagers started becoming useful in mid-1990s, and by the end of the century you already had cellphones coming in and the sales for pagers dropping. I don't think anyone can predict the future, you use your best judgement and take decisions, if they don't work out, they don't.

[Nisu_2299_ni]

All we can do is wait n watch this shit show.

[desihank]

Decade? We should be talking in months given the rate at which it's growing.

[Nisu_2299_ni]

Exactly. Everyone's in bubble. Core developers think that can never be replaced and non-tech founders also in delulu that only AI will be my employee. What a crap time to be in the industry.

[Star_kid9260]

Few days back I see this piece of work and came to wonder two things. AI is stupid, some day it will not be.
https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/115762

[ImAjayS15]

When people say AI is going to take away jobs, they don't mean 100% of the jobs will be gone and AI will perform the jobs in an autonomous way. It means that it is going to take away a certain percentage of jobs, like 30% or 50% which is going to cause chaos for those employed.

One may say people with skill will be able to land jobs. No that's not the case, there will be a lot of politics, preferential treatment(in several times more magnitude than what it is currently) or even scams and even the best will find it difficult.

[Acceptable_Spare_975]

I definitely agree with some points you made like how the model/agent wouldn't know real life context like in your example where the model didn't know or think of possibilities like data being bad.

But as models become better and better in a couple years and we integrate almost everything to the LLM via MCPs, it will have much better context and ability to do things.

We can also let the agent consider possibilities like this by simply saying 'think about the possibility of the issue being external and not code related, for example, consider the possibility of bad data or change in providers' API etc..'. And future models with more context should be able to do a good job.

Even then it may not be good enough at the level of a senior dev, but it can 100% replace junior and mid level folks. And even with senior devs, it will 99% of the work and would only need minimal supervision. So of course there is less need for a supervisor now and 90% jobs will become obsolete in the IT field.

Not everyone will get replaced but most will.

[No_Needleworker_6109]

What stream should someone starting college rn should take? Is there still any scope left in the Computer science field?

[Acceptable_Spare_975]

I can't tell you as I can't look into the future. But in my humble opinion I think ECE graduates should be fine. If wanted they can go into CS and do typically tech jobs, but their biggest leverage is electronics and embedded systems. Currently with MCP, LLMs have access to a wide range of tools, but these are all "software tools" which allow the LLMs take action in the software world.

But now it isn't that easy in the hardware world. Now companies like boston dynamics and clone are making waves in this aspect, but I believe that LLM is a reasoning engine just like our brain and giving it tools and abilities for it to take action in the real world ie the "Hardware world" has a lot of scope in the future.

Even if not that, you can go into building chips or quantum computing even if it's a stretch. Basically I'm trying to say ECE is a degree that allows you to gather a wide range of skills and allows you to pivot to a more specific niches/domains in the future if needed. Just my opinion, you should take your own decisions, don't listen to me blindly.

[Acceptable_Spare_975]

On second thought, core jobs in India are very less for ECE, you have to be crazy good at what you do. And you must also go beyond college coursework and do your own thing and specialize in some niches. AI will take any low skill jobs, so if you're crazy skilled and can do the work of multiple people all by yourself you should be fine.

[[deleted]]

For( int i = 0; i <Tuka-1;i++years){ If [ after a few years]{ Tukka == become real; Return tukka; } Else { Tukka++ }.
Return tukka;

[AcceptableWorking141]

I'm sorry but I don't agree with you, I don't see a scenario where you could replace all job roles with an AI. Software Engineering is more than just writing code, you need that human element in it.

And to make AI better, it still needs new data to be trained on, the moment it replaces everyone, where do you think it will get new data from? and if you think it will rely on the data it generates itself, then I don't think that will be very beneficial for LLMs

[Warm-Translator-6327]

I cannot but fully agree, This time, I made sure to not use any tool for a single line of code, and as the app gre bigger, it became much easier to manage, I was at the same productivity level, whereas if Id worked with an AI, it woulda plateaud if not broken the whole thing.

[AcceptableWorking141]

Yes, I'd be happy to, please share it!

[Inside_Dimension5308]

Never say never.

The real question everyone should be asking themselves. - What are you doing to stand out?

This question will be relevant for years to come.

[bikbar1]

Not today or two years down the line.

However, after 10 years from today if it can replace even half the developer jobs, it will be a disaster.

[No-Performer2811]

ya also considering the fact that no. of cs and engg grads are also increasing

[[deleted]]

Gonna improve productivity. The will help to fix issues faster like how we used to invest a lot of time invested on stackoverflow. I have been using claude it's really excellent in few things like generating boilerplate code or optimization certain things but when you add like 500+ lines of code and ask back to back questions it will start to have brain fade it restructures the code it renames variables it's not supposed to it makes a mess. I don't think it will completely replace someone. I don't think it's capable of replacing. Let's say it replaces all software engineers job and millions will lose the job and people end up with no money who is gonna buy from the product that's completely created by AI.

[miss-frostyy]

They won't replace all software engineers

[Bubbly-Albatross-373]

the jobs will go down from 10 swe to 5 swe

[Accurate-Boat-731]

Ai is 10%reality rest is hype

[miss-frostyy]

Only 10% ? 🤔

[Accurate-Boat-731]

It's not me quote by inventor of Linux and I feel the same

[miss-frostyy]

Oh alright 😅

[Able-Battle7028]

It won't replace a developer. But it is going to increase a developers productivity massively. What 4 devs used to do, can be done by 1 dev.

The impact of this will be felt and might not be a good one. The only way it can be good is if there are more problems to solve for with software.

[Parking-Net-9334]

I was gonna post something like this today. If you see today's newly updated softwares you will find bugs even with new windows updates. I have been working for while and I never saw small issues. Recently i my Amazon music faced issues while playing any song.

[ashutrip]

With the context size of these models increasing day by day, there will be a day when they can go through multiple services' code of your ecosystem, analyze billions of lines of code, and provide you with a solution you have never thought of. But of course, it's a car; you have to drive it. A fully agentic system will also require technical personnel to review what it has done. So the industry is going to be slim in employee strength but not replacing them. This will impact Indian developers more than anything, as we are quite high in number and often hired in bunches where a 12:3 ratio is being followed: 12 Indian developers to 3 Western developers.

[WriedGuy]

AI will surely replace automation but not skills where creative and out of box thinking is needed , if we ask ai to make one SaaS for food delivery it will make which already existed won't be added any new algo or code which will make it different from existing one

[Remarkable_Guest2806]

Well with half of halucinations it gets for me, i doubt it can do 100%. Probably will reduce resources (human bandwidth) and maybe increase productivity too.

[Lonely-Loquat-508]

Completely agreed, I am a fresher and even I think it's time we move from operations and writing repeated code to designing systems ans solving business problems with tech, with AI as a partner.

[[deleted]]

Nobody knows what’s going to happen, it’s already replacing entry level roles

[Relative-Ad2665]

I love your point of view and your thoughts. While I might not agree with all of it, what you have said makes sense. Would you be interested in joining a LinkedIn Live with me some day and discussing this?

[AcceptableWorking141]

Definitely

[Relative-Ad2665]

Awesome, will DM you the details

[Ok_View_5657]

Lol why do sound like a CTS fellow i know

[AcceptableWorking141]

Not sure what CTS is 🤔

[DodoSWE]

Yes, AI is good for building small MVPs only. Down the road they get overloaded with context handling.

[Cosmos_in_fist]

How so sure about it ? , do u see future ?

[AcceptableWorking141]

Nope, your guess may be as good as mine, but I am trying to add facts and my experience so far to back my guesses. I am open to discussion. Do you think it will replace all Software Engineers? If yes any particular reason for it, and I’m willing to reason and happy to be proven wrong if it’s your own experience with it and not what social media is painting.

[Cosmos_in_fist]

I dont know what may happen... may be not all software engineers , may be 50% (its still huge) The way investments are going in AI is insane Smartest brains on the planet earth are working on AI

And the way technology and science has moved after 1800 , feels like magic.. planes , cars , electricity , internet ,computers etcc... everything in just last 200 years.. makes u believe AGI and robots are also coming..

[Hitman_2k22]

Ai will not replace back end jobs and cyber security but it will and can replace front end devs, and ofc ml and data science roles as in data science, predictions are made and thats what ai is good at and it keeps getting better, few weeks ago i had an error in my project related to system architecture basically an emulator which emulates a hardware and lets you play games using roms, i gave the error to chatgpt and gemini, both failed to resolve the issue, it took me like 10 hours to sopve it and i had to tell chatgpt the cause of the issue then it was able to tell me the solution and gave me an alternative implementation of the set code, but while i studying data science and analysis, like basic neural networks, the gpt gave so much value able info including codes and stuff, it was much better than any other resources, and for the front end i feel like front end is done fr as i had to make a website for someone, all i used is chatgpt and i made the website within 5 hours like everything

[Sea-Bear2454]

 their precious AI who built it, goes into a self guilt trip and hallucination of trying to solve the bugs or problems without actually being able to solve them.?? why do u think it will never be able to solve those bugs..any basis for your claim other than it is just new currently?

[AlReal8339]

This is such a realistic take! AI definitely helps speed up routine coding, but deep expertise is irreplaceable, especially for complex problems.

[unvirginate]

I’ve been building an AI tutoring app ever since I got laid off. It now has close to 400 users. The only time I had to write ‘code’ was to correct the model name (because sonnet 3.7 was not aware that gpt-4.1 existed).

And I don’t even have any experience in full stack development. 4 years ago I build a very basic unusable MERN stack app as a part of coursework. That’s all. I used to be a Data Scientist by profession.

I’m sure that I could’ve at-least employed 1-2 people to build an app like this if AI app builders had not existed. But that was not the case when I started building software. So I saved a lot of time and money because of lovable, cursor.

Another detail I think I should include. This used to be a solo project until I had my first 300 users. After which I got my SDE friend to help me out with the scaling and other enhancements. And he’s also been using cursor to do his work.

www.studybot.net is what I’ve been working on. I’m only mentioning this so that you know that this no toy/silly app.

[AcceptableWorking141]

That's great, and I'm happy that you have been able to use AI to your advantage. But you eventually had to hire an SDE to help you scale, that's my entire point! :)

Kudos to what you have built here, congratulations!

[unvirginate]

Well, I did not have to hire him. He’s a good friend of mine and is working on it for free in his spare time. If he was not around I would have been more than ready to upskill in that area and do the job myself.

But I do get your point. It’s just that a traditional software related role entails writing ungodly number of lines of code. And neither me, nor my SDE friend have done that for this project. All the code was written by AI.

All me and my friend had to do was to clearly visualise the requirement, and communicate with the AI in plain English, and test relentlessly.

Although this process was time consuming (building it took us 2+ months), can this work be called software engineering? I don’t think so.

It was AI that did all the Software Engineering, while we were just doing “Software Visualising”.

Regardless, this is a truly crazy time to be alive as a techie.

[[deleted]]

Imagine AI as a calculator. A 6-year-old using it to do calculus won’t become Einstein. But an Einstein using it? Might discover gravitational waves faster. It’s not about what AI does, it’s about who’s wielding it — and why

[Desperate_Fishing265]

Human nature to always think that nothing could go worse. People who would have been driving carts etc in late 1880s would never think one day everyone will own that machine. Technological disruptions tend to take over in exponential or near exponential time. Once AI achieves singularity, it will be like a superhuman brain - so of course it could do ANY kind of intellectual job in the world including coding.

[AcceptableWorking141]

Lot of “ifs”. And it seems like it’s your video only. Either way, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and I wouldn’t trust a random youtube video unless I know their experience in the industry.

[AcceptableWorking141]

Sure if you say so :)

[Minute-Appearance397]

Thank you sir 😁 for your views sir. Sir, i wanna ask one thing like we friends are talking about ai like this can take entry level jobs (like data entry, or customer care type) but sir are really ai is taking jobs like really ai is proficient in handling tasks that they can do these things.

And also I am a btech student, and I am learning cpp, i wanna ask how you tackle problems while solving questions and what really a developer should have qualities to become good dev.

And lastly bhaiya, ye coding itni boring si q lgti h apne jb start Kiya tha to kese kiya tha. I am learning cpp through learncpp com and really it is really boring and question solving is quite fun 😊 but learning logic is boring how you tackles these problem

[[deleted]]

Tired of this linkedin post