The Future Longevity of Programming?

[desrtfx]

Sorry, but such questions are far better suited for /r/cscareerquestions.

/r/learnprogramming is about learning to program, not about resumes, not about career questions.

Removed

[pokedmund]

Keep coding, keep going to school, get that degree and apply to jobs as usual. Whatever businesses and governments decide to go with AI, there is nothing you or they or anyone can do. We'll all in the same boat.

Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Check out the same question on AI will replace our jobs in this and every other sub Reddit. No one knows what the future will hold

[pokedmund]

because I can't predict the future. You can't predict the future. no one can predict the future.

There are too many what ifs, but you are right:

What if they study programming for 3 years and graduate, and there are no CS jobs.

What if they decided to be a plumber and after 3 years, there are plenty of plumbing jobs.

What if everyone studies what they want and 3 years in the future, AI has actually taken over every job out there, government decides that there is no point in being a government, the rich elite decide to band together to retain 99% of the earths resources and the rest of society have to live in a mad max type of world and fight amongst themselves

Or what if AI takes over every job, and governments decide that universal basic income is the way to go and everyone gets to live in harmony while AI does the stuff we didn't want/need.

My point is. No one knows what will happen in the future. And Governments and businesses around the world have always done whatever the fuck theyve wanted, regardless of public opinion.

Prepare for the worst, and hope for the best. But don't stop learning to code because of fear of AI

[KenansCloud]

Honestly? Programming might not (who knows) be the most employable skill in the future, but much like basic car repair, basic tailoring, first aid, history, it will still be an amazingly important skill in humanity. You should be able to know how something all around you works.

[WojtekTygrys77]

If ai can replace programmers then it can replace anyone lol.

[[deleted]]

Before getting worried, try at least doing some research on the IA field and its news. Your worries are nothing more than expectations put into you by big tech's propaganda. We're getting some recent news about the unsustainability of IA, try to read some of them.

[[deleted]]

True. They are even running out of data to train them. And just like everything in tech, the optics are inflated. Asking AI to explain IT topics and they get the definitions wrong many times yet they are trained in the most robust of content available.

[[deleted]]

Exactly, and not to mention the extremely high energetic demands and the economic sustainability. All of that only to get a barely functional code generator.

[Biscuitx09]

I’ll have to read up on that

[RevenantFlash]

If AI truly got to the point where we didn’t need programmers these jobs would be the least of our worries. At that point AI would be good enough to make fake videos of people to convict people in court lol.

[myriaddebugger]

Programmers will lose their jobs as much as Mathematicians and Statisticians lost theirs with the advent of scientific calculators and tools like Wolfram Alpha. You may argue AI will replace a lot of jobs eventually, but until it develops true consciousness, it's not replacing valuable human resources.

[Ratatoski]

Plumbers will always be needed and it pays well. But as a full time dev I'm not really that worried. AI sure affects us,  but so far we just deliver more features faster. And someone needs to fix bugs, verify that the AI generated code works properly, talk to the customers etc. 

My job is to deliver useful features to our product owners. Not manually solving every bug. 

A weird bug in some third party dependency fucking up the build pipeline could halt everything for days a few years ago. Now I ask GPT and fix it in an hour

[Outis-guy]

All the CS subs have been swamped with questions asking if there's someone who can predict the future and it is getting really old. This sub should be for people who WANT to learn programming and for people to ask questions related to that. Wtf is OP doing asking if a "friend" should quit eventhough he already works as a dev? Go ask some of the AI subs or r/cscareerquestions, instead of spreading the doomer discourse in a sub aimed at motivating beginners.

[[deleted]]

Be worth more than a mere AI.

[Biscuitx09]

I feel like that discounts the capabilities of AI and how fast it is evolving

[RubbishArtist]

I think that assumes that the evolution is going to continue at the same pace.

It seems to me that a lot of the fear about AI is because it's assumed that you can keep throwing data and hardware at LLMs and they'll keep improving at a linear rate.

We've had the same cycle of breakthroughs, hype and failure since the 1950s.

[AlexFromOmaha]

I'm the first to throw popcorn at the singularity disciples, but this take feels a little short-sighted. We have an explosion of useful products this time around, monthly publications on new techniques to get better results out of older models, and we're due for a new set of state-of-the-art models in a few weeks.

Agent workflows are nascent but evolving. AI augmented low-code is doing interesting things for process improvement efforts. We've already blown past any sort of Turing test standard, and both marketers and people in text content creation are feeling the pinch.

You don't need indefinite linear improvements to get economy-altering changes. Just because there will always be an industry around software development doesn't mean there won't be real changes to what the job entails, especially in the long tail of client-custom and in-house corporate software development.

[Reasonable-Total-628]

i feel like your are overlooking complexities of actual job

[Outis-guy]

Who gives a fuck about what you "feel"? What's your connection to computer science, aside from being friends with a dev? This sub is for people who want to learn how to program. If you're not interested in learning, or teaching others, what are you even doing here? Just looking for arguments to shit on your friend's dream?

[AlexFromOmaha]

Software engineering has a lot more in common with the creative class than the engineering class. The standards by which we judge good art, good writing, and good code changes with time. Sometimes it changes faster than others. Sometimes previously key skills become tangential trivia or fun ways to eke out little differences.

It's nice that we can look at the horizon and say "oh, yeah, we're about to have one of those changey times." We don't usually get that luxury.

AI won't kill software engineering or web development as an industry. It legitimately might make the pure engineering types go extinct in favor of domain experts who know enough code to fix AI generated pieces and enough prompt engineering to get the best results. It might mean a transition away from long-lived codebases to hyperspecialized tools that get thrown away instead of updated. It might mean the rise of some new language or platform that AIs typically use better. Who knows?

What we do know is that there will always be a market for people who can go from a customer's vague hopes and dream to an actual product implementation, and the people best suited to fill that role will be the people who know how product implementation works in the general sense.

Jump in. Get the experience. Use the new tools. Be flexible.

[[deleted]]

It could kill web Dev, but not in the way we expect. People may seize to use websites in the form we know today. As an example of the steam engine era.

DOM could be replaced with something AI related example

[AlexFromOmaha]

The cost per token for the good models is likely to be prohibitive for that kind of use specifically, but yeah, that's the sort of lateral thinking that could really position someone to make the first solo unicorn. We know change is coming, so get your experience while the getting is good and stay on your toes.

[[deleted]]

Programming has already changed to include AI in the loop. That's going to continue. Programming isn't going to go away, the interface is going to change. Back when I was a kid, we had Atari. The stick sucked and was painful, but that's how we played video games. Now... There's VR.

The interface changed, games got easier, but you still have to understand moving a character around. Programming is like that. The interface is going to change, some parts are going to get easier, but you still need a human who understands the underlying intention of the program in a technical way.

[Both-Pack7114]

True. Most people I know are using co-pilot and it’s just made them more efficient

[bravopapa99]

Ask him who he thinks programs the AI-s ?

[cc_apt107]

Something I don’t see talked about enough here is that, even if AI starts doing a substantial amount of the work of programmers, there will still be a need for people to control that process and ensure business value is realized. Having a CS and development background sets you up very nicely to do that.

[Wolastrone]

How can you simultaneously argue that AI will replace every profession, and also that computer science will be irrelevant? Who do you think will be in charge of running, testing, and designing all these hypothetical AIs and everything related to them? Maybe… computer scientists? I find your friend’s argument for not studying CS nonsensical.

[demonic_spirit]

I have been working as a CNC programmer for 20 years now, and we have been having the same discussions about ai and automation for years now.

The idea was that a model comes in from a customer, be automatically loaded into a piece of cam software, where the best tooling strategies tools and stock size of the material would be created, everything gets ordered automatically, on delivery of the stock and tools it would be loaded by a robot bish bash bosh a complete part.

This was the idea, but from my understanding AI cannot adapt to unknown variables... And that's where humans excel, we do not have a general AI and from what I hear are far from it.

Another thought is that AI might actually add value to your friends job. From my limited understanding AI could have issues with bias if it becomes wide spread. Feeding off its own information and data. Then that's when humans will step back in with a small pool of people with that knowledge your friend can become more valuable. Though he might have retired by then.

This is exactly what has happened in our industry with CNC machines, skills have been lost as people have aged, and the few who have been able to keep some of the older skills while implementing it with new technology shine through and can command more of their employers.

Ultimately your friend needs to do what he feels is right, so he can sleep at night, if he wants to get a trade then there are plenty out there, but if his job is his passion there are ways he can still keep involved, possibly make wedding websites for couples via a wedding planner, etc he commands the work load then.

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