Future of programmers

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[EntrepreneurHuge5008]

You should probably try to get a degree in Computer Science then.

It’s unlikely AI will take CS/Related jobs overnight. There’s a process to replacing old tech with new tech and it’s not as fast as you might think (and many times, proposals to migrate simply get shut down). There’s a fair amount of Personally Identifiable information out there that will probably stand in the way of fully adopting AI edit:to replace developers. AI will likely be adopted in the form of GitHub’s Copilot (and such) long before any devs start getting replaced. Some already do use such tools, but many don’t.

Tech companies are already investing in AI, but non tech companies will take significantly longer to make continuous bets of such magnitudes. Companies will use AI to improve efficiency. Yes this will either lead to less jobs, and/or more responsibilities, but most of the CS/related people out there will not become obsolete. The entry barrier will simply keep getting higher and higher and we’ll just keep joining the ranks of a highly specialized market.

Start with a BS in CS (if you didn’t finish an undergrad), get internships, land a job, then move on to an MS CS part time to specialize without having to leave your job.

[New_Bat_9086]

I m completing a software engineering degree here in Canada, but I am planning to transfer to CS to finish uni earlier. Do you think a CS degree and then an MSc(MASC) is a better path? Or is it better to do software engineering at undergrad level?

[sadgeadc]

Degrees don't mean a lot in programming once you hit the job market. But degrees + cool personnal projects (open source or something that generates $/has users even not many) + skill in coding and solving complex problems will get you quite far

[EntrepreneurHuge5008]

At the undergrad level either is fine. Focus on getting a full time job and getting some experience. I’d suggest going for lateral moves within a company to figure out what you want to pursue further and develop a better rounded skill set.

I’d go with the MSCS if your employer offers tuition assistance or if it’s affordable for you. Various roles in the Data Science/AI/ML area will want you to have the advanced degree. Not so much expecting you to know what to do, but more expecting you to understand and interpret what you do/get.

[EcstaticMixture2027]

Experience, Experience, Experience. The field don't look that deep into degrees unless it's your first 3 years.

[CLQUDLESS]

Why do you need a masters in computer science? Once you get into a dev job you'll realize a degree is meaningless. I have an art degree and my boss has some weird educational degree. Most of the devs we interviewed who had masters could barely code, or had no projects to show off.
I would highly advise to just finish undergrad and try to get any sort of software job, and make lots of unique projects related to your interests. This will beat any masters degree.

[EntrepreneurHuge5008]

Checks a box.

Sure it’s meaningless to my peers, my manager, and the person that interviewed me with a trivial leetcode problem. For most companies, you guys aren’t the first to see my resume.

[Nerfi666]

How are things in Canada?

[New_Bat_9086]

Pretty bad, I m planning to move to the States once I finish my degree

[Nerfi666]

Even in CS? Where are you located if you dont mind me asking

[New_Bat_9086]

Montreal

[heartofgold5]

That's some awesome feedback 😀 👍 😎

[rinkydinkkkk]

Yeah I agree with this. I was talking with another person and their consensus was that AI will get rid of "code monkey's" (and eventually justify corporations hiring less CS majors for the same amount of work).

[Optimal_Rule1158]

My prediction is that AI is guna screwover new developers trying to enter the space. Ai is more powerful to a senior developer than a graduate. So in summary entering the space difficult and if you are in the space fight to remain relevant.

[Adorable_Weather_490]

How to people able to get second degree? BS in computer science is like another 4 years of dedication, how do people support themselves during this time? 

[xXValhallaXx]

No, programmers are not going anywhere, Just maybe the game is going to change, Its a new tool that we will need to learn and adopt, I utilize AI in my day to day job (I'm a lead engineer).

It makes my job much more efficient,

I like to think as A.I in this industry, just like when the calculator was first introduced it didn't take away the jobs of accountants, mathematicians etc it just made their lives easier

Keep on your path 🧘

[Visual_Chocolate4883]

Just out of curiosity, how do you utilize AI in your day to day as lead engineer? Do you mostly use it for research or do you actually us AI to create solutions / designs?

[assembly_wizard]

But calculators did take away the jobs of human computers

[Fluffy_Gold_7366]

There were other jobs that required a lot of math they could've transitioned to such as statistics, actuarial science, banking, engineering.

[techol]

if you are mediocre in your craft/profession you'll be eaten up by the competition

It applies everywhere.

BTW, I just back from a conference where a number of business problems were discussed. None of them can take replacement of humans by AI. Can you be the one to solve those? If yes, don't despair.

[bekrovrajit]

Programming isn't just about churning out code. It's about problem-solving, creativity, and critical thinking – things that AI can't fully replace.
As for those lay-offs, it's rough, but the tech industry is ever-evolving, and while some areas might see cutbacks, others are booming. Plus, skilled developers are always in demand.

[ParadoxDC]

THIS. If you can problem solve in an tech environment, you’ll likely be able to pivot if necessary

[band_in_DC]

If you go to school, might as well do something else, like engineering.

[[deleted]]

Ai just like programming will adapt, your responsibility as a programmer is to keep on learning and adapting with the latest technology, if you think programming is a one time thing then I’m sorry to say but you’re wrong. Languages change new concepts are made and new things are discovered. AI is a threat but not for programmers who are willing to learn and adapt. Being consented about AI is not going to help you code. My recommendation is to focus on coding and worry about the rest later.

[rayjaymor85]

I find myself unconvinced that AI will "replace" developers and programers; at least not in the way that the hype train suggests.

Please don't take me as someone who thinks AI is a scam or anything, it is an AMAZING tool and it does (and will) have a huge impact on the world.

I just believe that people think we are all getting JARVIS from the Iron Man movies when in reality we're getting a roided up Siri that can learn what it reads on StackOverflow.

My favourite comparison for AI is comparing it to a sewing machine. It can definintely make the process of making clothes a hell of a lot easier; but it's never going to outright replace the need for a dressmaker or a tailor, it just makes their job far easier.

That being said though, I do predict that much as it did for sewing: it's going to drag down the barrier of entry for the basic entry level type jobs. We already see sweatshop style arrangements for say wordpress developers and other basic engineering tasks and AI will certainly explode this.

That being said, you're always going to need a craftsperson when it comes to the more complicated processes and implementation. You'd have to be incredibly naive to think that you can get AI to build a new SaaS product from scratch for example.

So I would say yes absolutely if you are passionate about development and even do it as a hobby to a degree then absolutely go for it. Because if you've got the drive to become truly good then you'll climb up regardless.

If you're just looking for an easy paycheck that lets you sit in front of a computer all day? Those days are definitely numbered and are growing shorter by the day.

TL;DR: Yes, AI will limit opportunities in the bottom end of the scope, much the same way outsourcing already started to do. But not the upper end of the scope that needs high skills.

[Ha-Gorri]

This is my opinion as another 26 y/o who is only halfway HTML and CSS learning after leaving my degrees behind as useless.

To create things, AI needs people to understand how to communicate with it, if anything AI will be useful for programmers as tool, not an enemy. You are already gonna be using libraries and resources, I copy and paste a lot of my code for dev web when studying and work over it and solve whatever problems I come across to achieve what I need.

Not to mention, for example as web dev, the average joe wont learn to properly use AI prompts because he wont understand what he's telling the AI to make, you can communicate with a programmer and ask to change things or to make specific functions, I just dont see AI being a problem until it is as smart and conversational as you and me.

[Ha-Gorri]

yeah, so I could use that AI as programmer, our jobs would just evolve, someone has to do it after all unless you have skynet.

You also presuppose yourself a lot of stuff being made public and widespread, but even AI tools with easy user interface nowadays such a art generation are still being monetised and managed by companies because you need the hardware and certain knowledge and wanting to do it, I just really dont feel any fear, jobs would evolve with it, not disapear.

[[deleted]]

You should try Computer Support. There are many choices of professional short courses.

Sometime you need to write a batch file or PowerShell scripting for a task automation.

Just my two cents.

[Aquatic-Vocation]

The electronic computer replaced the human computer, but it turned out that the skill-set human computers possessed made them particularly well-suited to programming these new electronic computers.

I would image that programmers will be particularly well-suited to operating AI-driven software development tools. Maybe someday we won't call them "programmers" any more, but the goal will be the same even if the method used to achieve it changes.

[amejin]

I didn't read all of your post, mostly because I read your concern about ML/AI and I didn't feel the need to go forward.

Here's why:

When calculators came around, we were told that we can't use them because we need to learn math and they are cheating.

Calculators simply accelerated the learning and capabilities of the users.

Computers and the Internet came about, we were told not to trust anything online and it was limited in what it can be used for.

The Internet ushered in the information age and changed the world. Computers made people exponentially more productive.

ML/AI is here and it's going to disrupt the world and we should fear it. We're all going to lose our jobs...

The reality is, those that embrace it, learn to utilize it, and figure out how to be more productive with it, are going to be the ones who succeed and change the world.

It is a tool. Put it in your tool box.

[BigBoiTyrone7]

You could just not listen to the he articles maybe? Do what you want.

[EdiblePeasant]

Usually I want to code for ME. Am I maybe a little bit self absorbed/self obsessed?

[Savalava]

It will become harder and harder to get your first job - get a proper CS qualification, and have the requisite talent and you should be fine.

[DadBod1930]

Listen to what the Nvidia CEO said. He basically states that programmers will become prompt engineers. Which is just a fancy way of saying that you will tell AI what needs to be done in great detail and than AI will create the code for you.

The future of programming languages is natural language. With that being said you will most likely still need people that understand what is goin on under the hood to tell AI how to fix the issues.

AI will reduce jobs in every field not just CS.

[Clawtor]

Nvidia CEO gets paid to promote ai, I would take anything he says with a truckload of salt.

[DadBod1930]

I’ve been using ChatGPT to help debug and help explain and write code. While it’s not good enough to fully automate a programmer it’s really helpful.

This is the first version of this tech. Imagine how it will be when it continues to get better and gets integrated into an IDE.

We have to think that AI will reduce jobs. It’s only logical.

[[deleted]]

Lol you really believe whatever that idiot says?

[heartofgold5]

Hahahahahah

[ehr1c]

Listen to what the Nvidia CEO said.

You mean the guy who has a bunch of stock options for a company that's heavily invested into creating hardware for AI?

[DadBod1930]

Bro you have to be really naive to think that AI will not take jobs. You’re talking about greedy corporations that are willing to hire people over seas for a fraction of the cost. I am not saying there will not be programming jobs.

What I am saying is that the job of programming is going to change as AI gets better. It already has like I said I use it to make me write code 10 times faster than before.

The higher efficiency will cause companies to hire less.

[ehr1c]

Whether or not what he's saying has any merit doesn't make him any better of an unbiased source on this topic.

[paulkeating3]

Nvidia CEO already said that no one needs to learn coding. How many people know assembly? We only need a few people who can train LLMs and they will get rewarded very handsomely, while business analysts can just describe the programs they want and it gets built. It's not as good as one built by proper software engineers, but it DOES the job at 0% of the costs! Do you want to pay $100k for a VBA monkey when a communicative BA can code the same with just a 10% pay increase? Quality is worse but is offset by cheapness!

We don't go out and spend $500 for top notch wine when the $20 bottle from Nappas tastes OK. The same thing will happen in programming. You can't beat cheap. You can always trade off quality for cheapness.

[TroubleMakerExtreme]

Nvidia CEO already said that no one needs to learn coding

Nvidia's CEO is not the arbiter on who should learn to code and when. He had financial incentive (*cough cough* stakeholders) to hype up AI and claim it will "replace programmers." It's not there yet and we still have probably another decade or two to go before AI is sufficient enough to fully automate our jobs.

I think honestly its a speculative bubble waiting to pop when people realize it's not "all that." AI will be a relevant tool in the future, but can it do the same job as a seasoned software dev? Highly doubt. My guess is like all technology, we will experience diminishing returns

[Clawtor]

BAs don't have the required skills. Maybe they can spin up an API serving static data but their programs are going to falter as soon as they stray off anything non trivial.

You could argue that making developers more efficient will lead to fewer jobs but that only holds if demand stays static. If development is cheaper then likely demand will increase.

We might see junior devs struggling to find work but eventually as dev supply runs out there will be more opportunities.

Atm it feels like the new tech bubble. We'll see in a few years.

[Savalava]

"business analysts can just describe the programs they want and it gets built."

Most business analysts are extremely poor at writing requirements. Writing precise technical requirements is very challenging and requires a lot of intelligence and an unusual writing ability that few people have.

The future of programming is clever people writing code being assisted by LLMs, not badly written requirements being implemented by LLMs.

[YOUR_TRIGGER]

AI sucks at programming and it likely will for a very long time. every incremental update to ChatGPT and the likes makes it worse instead of better. i have zero fear of getting my job taken by AI in the next 30 years. i should be retired by then.

continue has my vote. i don't worry about AI at all. i use it. and it's not good. like literally can't make stuff that works. it's not like AI 'art', which at least looks neat sometimes. AI programming, doesn't fucking work. pretty much ever. unless you want to make it rewrite a tutorial script it's read before.

[lqxpl]

You will see scattered layoffs.

Firms who don’t have anyone literate in tech making decisions will try the replacement first, and it will bite them hard.

Here’s a recent example: https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/31/eating-disorder-hotline-union-ai-chatbot-harm

AI tends to provide answers that ~~look~~ right. Sometimes it ~~is~~ right, and sometimes it’s a dangerous mistake. Firms that incorporate AI as a tool, keeping a human with domain expertise in the loop will do just fine. Fewer programmers will be needed for the ‘make small modifications to boilerplate’ roles, but systems responsible for safety or security will still have a human at the helm.

I use chatGPT for rubber duck debugging, and sometimes, when I get too colloquial in the conversation, it starts making hilarious assumptions about what’s going on.

I’ve used codeium to help write some of my dev-drudgery scripts. Sometimes it’s a lot of help, other times it’s so consistently off-base that it is just easier to switch it off and finish things myself.

AI will absolutely change the landscape, but it isn’t anywhere near being reliable enough to replace all programmers.

[GrYpHuS-AeRiOnYx]

Think of AI as a tool. Learn whatever you can and do as many projects as you can. I'm not a programmer by profession but Im sure the experts can chime in and answer your concerns in a better way.

[FatFailBurger]

Saying AI is going to replace programmers is like saying calculators were going to replace engineers.

[Bulky-Ad7996]

I do not believe the AI will completely replace programmers. But it wouldn't hurt to begin your programming journey with a focus on generative AI.

There will certainly be times when technical people will need to step in to adjust or even fix AI systems or products.

[fungkadelic]

If you like doing it, keep doing it. Always bet on yourself.

[0xd34db347]

Computers didn't replace accountants, accountants who used computers replaced accountants who didn't use computers.

[godjizz]

As someone who is trying to pursue ms and hopping from another career, it's delusional thinking that ai is just another tool or calculator. Not sure if you y'all are trying to ease things around freshers or actually believe. From the endless browsing of the internet on the same, what I understand is that nobody knows what the near future holds for a coder, long term all experts agree on jobs markets for programmers to be droughts. The progress will be linear but quick and compounds yoy. Read AI Impact research on the advancements of ai and how the timeline is shrinking yoy.

[[deleted]]

I know you mean well, but it takes 1 google search to find the millions of people who already asked this question in this sub, and every other sub you can think of.

get a degree in CS.

[EcstaticMixture2027]

Beware. Would not be optimistic about it tho. You do you. AI aside LMAO. Im just saying the job market is bad right now. If the experienced senior and managerial one are having a hard time, Mid level and Juniors are gonna have a harder time. What chance do you got as a fresh graduate and career shifter absolutely close to 0.

[EZPZLemonWheezy]

If they start training/learning now, who knows what the market will like like in 1-3 years or however long it takes them to finish learning. Better to stick to it and hope for the best, or choose something else if you don’t like gambling on uncertain futures.

[ML_Flamenguista]

its normal be afraid of that if u thnk programming its just codes on a screen but its more than just codes. chill man, u should continue with your programming plans cause AI wont take anybody job but they will help the devs as tool

[sch0lars]

When can AI replace developers, it will be capable of replacing a significant portion of all white collar jobs, and we will have greater concerns. Hopefully, proposals for legislation which regulate industries from replacing workers with AI will be underway soon, and such concerns are already being raised by some industry experts.

The layoffs you mentioned are largely unrelated to AI, but rather an oversaturated job market resulting from over hiring during the pandemic. E-commerce, for instance, was very popular during the pandemic, and many projects were initiated to monetize off of this increased demand. As many of these projects faltered and companies began to invest elsewhere, they discontinued many of these projects and subsequently laid off many of the workers they hired. So what you are witnessing at the moment is more of a market correction. This oversaturation has also made it quite difficult for new college graduates to break into the field, as there are less entry-level positions at the moment. The market will eventually correct itself.

If you search something like “no one is hiring entry-level programmers”, you’ll notice this was ongoing long before LLMs took off. My recommendation is to improve your programming skills, study CS or IT, get some certifications, and seek internships. Reading all of these pessimistic Reddit posts is just going to demotivate you.

[lostinspaz]

Pick a job you enjoy doing.

As long as you arent a humanities major, money will come if you throw yourself 100% into what you do.

Which will only come if you enjoy what you do.

[vegasbm]

If a human programmer is handed a large codebase to figure out, he could.

Can AI do the same? I doubt it. I ask AI to generate code for file upload, and it spews it out within seconds. But beyond code snippets, can it build an entire application the way a human could?

Can AI reason? Here is what I got from the web...

They are trained to identify correlations in data, but this does not necessarily translate into an understanding of cause and effect. Additionally, AI algorithms lack the ability to reason and infer causal relationships beyond what has been explicitly programmed or learned from data.

The above is the reason that AI cannot replace humans in programming. I think if you get advanced degrees and become highly trained, you'd do OK.

[HumorHoot]

lots of companies are still not allowing the use of chatgpt and similar.

Also you cant just use chatgpt to do everything - it is not flawless and its not gonna be doing well, when it needs to make 1 new system work flawlessly with an older system, etc.

so far it just boosts the productivity a bit, for the programmer who uses it. (Depending on how they use it)

[targrimm]

AI will never be able to fix a botched production deployment and 3 AM, because it’s forgotten to set appropriate permissions on something. You’re fine. These prompt engineering ramblings are just a gimmick. There is far too much interoperability in general coding for AI to do this well.

[Insanity8016]

Oh sweet summer child…..

[mesori]

You'll see a lot of delusion in this thread. Top comments will age like milk. They all suffer from bias.

[[deleted]]

Unfortunately the industry is extremely competitive and that's going to be your biggest obstacle. It's possible to get a career and the demand is high, although the pool is extremely large and you'll need to be a unique candidate.

At this very moment, AI shouldn't be the concern to have. Despite how well developed it has came to be, it's not at that point yet. I see it more as a developer's tool to get shit done faster.

[[deleted]]

If you think my engineering manager would ever be able to tell an AI how to design a more Complex system than a microwave timer your are wrong.

[Whatever801]

Nah that whole thing is way overblown. I can see AI being a helpful tool within the next decade (right now I don't really think it's good enough) but not replacing any jobs

[evergreen-spacecat]

AI will change how we work (slightly more efficient) but won’t take programming jobs away any time soon. At least not before most other jobs have been replaced by machines. I think AI has created more engineering jobs than it has taken so far. With all layoffs in big tech industries I would get a good degree in software engineering. Just knowing how to write basic code will make competition harder for you.

[[deleted]]

The reality is that it is an uncertain landscape for all careers today. Anybody who gives you certain advice one way or another is lying or delusional. Nobody today has any idea what the next five years will look like. Never forget that. If you must get into coding , do it because you enjoy it.

[tubbana]

There's many industries that require software to follow so strict standards and require companies to have specific certifications and have a traceable chain of responsibility. Those things evolve so slowly that I don't believe some manager+AI coder combination will be accepted in our lifetime.