A reflection on how AI is transforming software development, drawing parallels to the Industrial and Digital Revolutions that displaced previous professions.
About a decade ago I was invited to a New Year’s celebration. I spent most of the night talking to the host: a man who had started his career as a lithographer. He told me how desktop publishing had made his entire profession vanish within a decade. Fortunately he was still young at the time, so he was able to reinvent himself. He ended up very successful in advertising.
I felt somewhat secure, as he told me about a struggle I never expected to face. I was a software developer. My craft was different, I thought. Computers are going to be essential for the rest of my career. Even though the software development craft had changed substantially several times already, the core would still require people like me: thinking logically to solve problems by telling computers what to do in a specialized language.
When the first AI coding assistants appeared, I jumped on board immediately. At first, they were just smart auto-complete: helpful for trivial tasks, but I still did the real work. Each month they got better. Tasks that once required my full attention became something I could delegate. Today’s tools can complete complex programming tasks that would have taken me days, often on the first try.
I became a programmer because I didn’t want to be a manager. I want to make things, not tell others to make them.
Now I manage AI. I sit in a supervisory role over systems that do the work I used to love. My days are now filled with describing tasks and validating whatever the AI spat out. Important work, I’m sure, but it’s not the job I loved.
When the steam engine arrived, I imagine the weaver and blacksmith at the time must have experienced something similar. They must have mourned the loss of their profession as they were out-competed by their steamy adversary. The Industrial Revolution took place over many generations. Many parents were unable to hand over their evaporated business to their children.
The Digital Revolution is not that long ago. It didn’t take multiple generations like the Industrial Revolution did; most changes happened within a single generation.
In either revolution, society didn’t collapse. These revolutions were brutal for many individuals, but humanity adapted. New professions emerged. In the Industrial Revolution, the children of displaced craftsmen became factory managers, engineers, railway operators. In the Digital Revolution, lithographers became illustrators. The economy grew. Living standards and life expectancy rose.
We are now in the AI Revolution. This one will not take multiple generations, it will not even take a single generation. Professions are already vanishing, including mine.
Nobody knows what the future holds. All I know is that we’ve survived earlier revolutions. I don’t see a reason why this one will be any different. Of course, all previous revolutions took longer than this one will ever take; strategies for coping with the previous ones will not work this time round. But we’ll figure something out.
As for me, I’ll need to find some new source of joy in my career. I think there is still a place for my software-engineering mind, just maybe not where I am right now. If you still need a skilled software engineer to do software engineering, let me know.
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