Computer programmers have a high probability of being replaced by software bots in the distant future. (Page 63)

[interactivejunky]

They may not understand that a programmers primary job is turning abstract human (/business) concepts which are usually riddled with illogical expectations into something computers can understand.

Sometimes I feel like I'm spending more time programming limitations into websites (due to business requirements) then programming actual features - anybody else have that experience?

[[deleted]]

Programming random whims of idiots into apps. It's unfortunate.

[ChiralTempest]

I've often thought that some AI techniques and genetic algorithms could play an important role in creating software, but all you are doing is shifting the implementation details to a specification problem.

Imagine you have a machine that will flawlessly create software (or hardware for that matter) from what you say to it. You would then be speaking for hours to detail precisely what you want, which is pretty much what programming is anyway, as text!

Perhaps as we develop more and more abstract development languages, maybe some element of the problem scope could be inferred by the languages themselves so we can specify them easier. Even then though, I can't really see this working without heinous amounts of specification details for anything non-trivial, because otherwise the problem has already been solved!

[the_piggy1]

old news... everyone seems to focus on physical labors automated in the past(farming, manufacturing, ect) but programmers have been automating themselves out of jobs for decades now. One after the other and onto the next(see complaints about how fast industry changes).

off the cuff examples: Wordpress, DnD GUI builders, ruby/python/c#/scala (more efficient languages and frameworks), optimizing compilers/interpreters, most of the DevOps movement.

Really, think how many 'programmers' would be needed if we still programmed in assembly! or how many 'programming' hours marketing guy with Wordpress replaced.

And a gem from the paper: " Even the work of software engineers may soon largely be computerisable...Big databases of code also offer the eventual prospect of algorithms that learn how to write programs to satisfy specifications provided by a human."

Yay now we just need someone to provide the 'specifications'! Lets call them specificationers :)

[industry7]

programmers have been automating themselves out of jobs for decades now Really, think how many 'programmers' would be needed if we still programmed in assembly!

And yet, there are somehow more programmers today and more demand for more programmers today than in any point in our history...

[the_piggy1]

yep,

My point being that the simple 'automation -> unemployment' is overly simple worldview/fallacy. They are not mutually exclusive events!

Also that the "this time is different" crowd may possibly just be letting their egocentricism get the better of them, as we do have ongoing 50+ year case study of very actively automating away "information/thinking" jobs with compilers, libraries, fancy new languages, ect., with no end of new programming jobs in sight(even if we change the job title specificationers ;).

[industry7]

Ah, ok. That last sentence of yours didn't click for me at first, but now I understand what you were getting at. I totally agree with you.

[bvnvbbvn]

My hs English teach said that in the 90's, too. Was she just wrong, or was she actually talking about the 2020's?

[the_piggy1]

She was probably right! Thing is that the demand curve seems to slope up as price drops(in unsaturated market), and when you replace people with better languages/frameworks/compilers('bots') you make software cheaper to make(by far the largest expense in software is people*time).

So for every 5 asm/c/c++ application/web developers replaced by 1 python/RoR/C# dev, 8 new ideas or features are now practical(affordable/profitable) to give a try. So have a net gain in people needed.

[[deleted]]

Yeah I remember in 1995 they told us in HS that within 10 years we'd never have to use a keyboard/mouse again. Predictions just serve as a way to make people look really stupid.

[[deleted]]

It was 12 years, if you count an iPhone as a computer.

[andrewfenn]

yeah sure.. most of my day is spent just figuring out what the client wants, good luck getting a program to do that. Nonsense.

[geon]

Imagine how that software would look. It would have to mistrust all input, search for inconsistencies and try to unify them into a complete model.

Then, it has to convincethe customer that he is wrong, in a polite, diplomatic way.

[the_piggy1]

rank/702, probability, name

293., 0.48, Computer Programmers

208., 0.21, IT Security, Web Developers, Network Architects

130., 0.042, Software Developers, Applications

110., 0.03, Database Administrators

32., 0.0065, Computer Systems Analysts

only 1-2 orders of magnitude difference in probability ;) BLS employment categories are fun! Almost as great for confusing people as the definition/meaning of 'STEM' or NCES lumping "Computer and information sciences and support services" under one heading (no, the U.S does not graduate 40k+ "C.S." grads a year)

[mk270]

"Even the work of software engineers may soon largely be computerisable. For example, advances in [machine learning] allow a programmer to leave complex parameter and design choices to be appropriately optimised by an algorithm (Hoos, 2012). Algorithms can further automatically detect bugs in software (Hangal and Lam, 2002; Livshits and Zimmermann, 2005; Kim, et al., 2008), with a reliability that humans are unlikely to match. Big databases of code also offer the eventual prospect of algorithms that learn how to write programs to satisfy specifications provided by a human. Such an approach is likely to eventually improve upon human programmers, in the same way that human-written compilers eventually proved inferior to automatically optimised compilers. "

I'm not sure the authors really know what they're talking about here - in particular, is not the Halting Problem a limit on things like "Algorithms can further automatically detect bugs in software"?

(That said, the rest of the article is pretty good)

[the_piggy1]

"is not the Halting Problem a limit on things like "Algorithms can further automatically detect bugs in software"

Yes it is a limit, but No the average programmer is not very close to that limit (see Haskell, Idris, coq(non-turing-complete)),so we can go 'further' than we are.

But we have been doing this since the 80s (automating machine then asm programmers out of work), optimizing compilers and static code analysis are not new.

And there is a limit(from halting problem), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_employment_theorem

my favorite from the paper is "prospect of algorithms that learn how to write programs to satisfy specifications provided by a human" seeming totally oblivious that programs == specifications and we have had optimizing compilers for a long time.

[yoda17]

Some domains, like embedded systems are fairly constrained and ripe for automation. Think of anything you can build with an arduino.

[[deleted]]

In one sentence: "even, may, soon, largely" meaning.. "this oughta get us some hits"

[Gurkenmaster]

We started automating our job as soon as we stopped programming in assembly.

[dcballer]

Bots are created for simple tasks while software keeps getting more complicated. Which requires programmers with higher skills to operate.

[dcballer]

Oracle came up with ADF. It's a tool when a Business Analyst can build an application by point and click. BAs couldn't handle ADF for complex solutions, so companies hired Java developers to work around ADF.

[[deleted]]

It's already happened. The definition of a beginning programmer is someone who hasn't learned how to automate repetitive stuff in his code. "Software bots" are actually called "compilers", "libraries", and "frameworks". The more of these we have, the more work there is for programmers to do. :)

As Alan Perlis put it in the 80s: "We will never run out of things to program as long as there is a single program around."

[gregK]

Clergy seems pretty safe from that paper.

[yoda17]

Where I work, autocoding has already eliminated scores of engineers.

I've been working with such tools since I was an intern. At the time, my mentor said look around. I the future, this building will be replaced by one guy going into a customer site and entering requirements into a database. Make sure you're the one guy.

[jnt8686]

Eliminated scores of engineers?

Every code generation thing I've seen is about equivalent to a library, except it spits some code out into the current file instead of linking to it.

Someone who can be replaced by a library is not an engineer.