— Hey John, I hope you are well. I am really passionate about CS (specifically Software Engineering) and I want to pursue a career in it. But I can't help but be a bit concerned about the future availability of coding jobs due to AI (chatgpt4 and stuff). I understand it's hard to predict how things will be in the next 10-15yrs, but my main concern is that I may be putting in all this hard work for nothing. I'm concerned Al will make my future job(s) obsolete before I even get it. Any thoughts on this?
— If you build full “product skills” and use the best tools for the job. which today might be hand coding, but later may be Al guiding, you will probably be fine.
— I see....by “product skills” do you mean hard and soft skills?
— Software is just a tool to help accomplish something for people — many programmers never understood that. Keep your eyes on the delivered value, and don't over focus on the specifics of the tools.
— Wow I’ve never looked at it from that perspective. I'll remember this. Thanks for you time. Much appreciated.
You do not need John Carmack to tell you that programmers that use AI as another tool for assistive programming will probably replace programmers that don't use it. It won't totally replace them all.
It also means less programmers are needed. Hence all levels of programmers juniors and seniors are affected.
I think the ultimate question is how much more productive a software engineer would get compared to baseline. I.e. using GPT for assistive programming instead of using Google, Stackoverflow and some good ol' thinking about problems.
Productivity means not just coding, but the ability and rate to successfully complete software projects and maintain software.
Factor in that soon, most search engines will also use GPT as a backend (as Bing already does) in some form, to get an explicit answer or better rank search results. Thus, search engines will also improve and lead to more productivity.
We might not need less software engineers at all due to the Jevons paradox. [1]
Basically, demand for software engineers is constantly increasing currently, in a roughly linear fashion, despite automation being at levels never seen before. Think low-code/no-code API integration platforms, simple to use, high-level and mature programming languages, frameworks & libraries, cloud technology etc.
We never measured how many developers these technologies have replaced, because the increase in application possibilities and technology accessibility have only created jobs.
Assistive programming with GPT (if/when possible in a professional way, like Copilot is) could only disrupt this if the average productivity increase for every developer in the world over-weighs the average increase of jobs.
So, if ceteris paribus there would be 3-4% more developer jobs each year [2], then, if 10% of developers globally started using GPT assistive programming, they would need a 30-40% overall productivity increase in order to thwart that trend.
That's a lot, because it's not just being able to create some "x code snippet 20% faster", but generally being able to complete entire software projects 30-40% faster (and maintain them 30-40% more efficiently!) than their non-GPT-user counterparts.
If the productivity increase is more like in the 10% range, then on the individual level, time might be better spent leveling up and learning technology instead of learning how to tweak prompts and find bugs in GPT-generated code - as learning any technology as a developer yields to way more than a mere 10% of increase in productivity.
Yes he made the point succinctly and clearly. But he's not the first person to offer that insight. Employers (or customers, for freelancers) pay you to add value, which can take many forms. They do not pay you to hone your expertise with programming tools.
Mastery of programming languages, tools, and expertise comprise a necessary but not sufficient set of skills needed to add business value. You also have to understand the business domain sufficiently well to translate requirements into software, and usually to help define the requirements. You have to work as a member of a team and a larger organization.
For years I've written "No company ever needed 5,000 more lines of Javascript code." You don't get paid for writing code, or writing the highest-quality code. You get paid to solve business problems and add value. People who can do that will always get jobs, even if someday the descendants of ChatGPT make up part of their toolkit.
— Hey John, I hope you are well. I am really passionate about CS (specifically Software Engineering) and I want to pursue a career in it. But I can't help but be a bit concerned about the future availability of coding jobs due to AI (chatgpt4 and stuff). I understand it's hard to predict how things will be in the next 10-15yrs, but my main concern is that I may be putting in all this hard work for nothing. I'm concerned Al will make my future job(s) obsolete before I even get it. Any thoughts on this?
— If you build full “product skills” and use the best tools for the job. which today might be hand coding, but later may be Al guiding, you will probably be fine.
— I see....by “product skills” do you mean hard and soft skills?
— Software is just a tool to help accomplish something for people — many programmers never understood that. Keep your eyes on the delivered value, and don't over focus on the specifics of the tools.
— Wow I’ve never looked at it from that perspective. I'll remember this. Thanks for you time. Much appreciated.