I found this thought funny. A few years ago everyone was all learn to code so you don’t lose your job! Now there wont be any programming jobs in 10 years. But we will need a lot of manual labor still.
I can think of no better way to train an AI to hate humanity enough to invent Skynet and kill us all, than to introduce them to MS Teams meetings with managers who all want things that are completely incompatible with what they asked for the last time, and require you to throw away about 40% of what you already wrote.
The reactionary “learn to code” nonsense started a lot further back than a few years! Also, who told you there won’t be any software development positions in 10 years?
If machine intelligence is indeed a different form of intelligence, then it can be observed and judged on the basis of its own merits, as opposed to a messianic waiting for a moment where it might equal or eclipse (weakly defined) human intelligence. This would even render obsolete the question as to whether or not machines can think—which in itself willfully glosses over the corresponding opposite question, “Can humans think?” posed by the former Fluxus artist (and Emmett Williams collaborator) Tomas Schmit in the year 2000 (Schmit et al. 2007, 18–19). — Crapularity Hermeneutics: Interpretation as the Blind Spot of Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and Other Algorithmic Producers of the Postapocalyptic Present. Florian Cramer.
Remember when Biden told coal miners to learn to code
“My liberal friends were saying, ‘You can’t expect them to be able to do that,’” Biden told his New Hampshire audience. “Gimme a break! Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program for God’s sake.”
These politicians and policy makers don’t know what they talk about when it comes to tech. Any one who tells you that programming jobs will be gone because of AI has never written a complex piece of software before. Also the trades pay well because there is a shortage of workers. If everyone starts going into the trades wages will crater. It’s just cycles. I remember when nobody wanted to go into the trades because it didn’t pay well. This created the shortage of workers. And since salaries are better now because of the shortage lots of people want to go into the trades This will create an oversupply of tradespeople and the cycle will repeat.
Building trades are hell on your body and there is no goddamn way that any construction worker (Electrician, carpenter, plumber, pipefitter, mason etc) can last until SS age-- esp. as they are planning to raise it to 70.
It’s two quotes. Miners don’t throw coal into furnaces.
My liberal friends were saying, ‘You can’t expect them to be able to do that,’” Biden told his New Hampshire audience. “Anybody who can go down 300 to 3,000 feet in a mine, sure in hell can learn to program as well, but we don’t think of it that way,” he said.
“Gimme a break! Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program for God’s sake.”
the only job that can’t be replaced is… venture capital guy
The ai that’s been trained specifically to predict trends: ;3
Lol anyone who thinks you don’t need any programmer in 10 years of time will burn and crash in the next few years when finally realizing that AI isnt as intelligent as we’re being sold.
Good luck trying to troubleshoot the code AI wrote tho.
Just in time to finish your uni degree which you started 3 years ago then…
No wonder business is complaining that uni grads are so unprepared and lost.
It really IS ridiculous. I even took a beginners coding class in high school. In the end, we will always needs programmers so if coding is your thing, keep doing it.
But I would personally rather construct a small home with my bare hands than learn to properly program. (I am not good at it…haha)
The neat thing about most jobs is you don’t have to be good at them to get paid.
This also applies to your manager and coworkers though.
That’s the key point I reckon “if coding is your thing” many people are trying to learn a complex thing they have no interest in.
I work in software development but I also have a second job as an arborists offsider because I’m pretty sure trees will never stop fucking growing.
The Learn To Code hype was being driven by employers to create a work surplus to drive wages down. Now those same employers think they can use AI instead.
then it’s going to inadvertently happen to the trades too 😬
I remain deeply skeptical that AI can solve the types of complex problems that require human thought. AIs will never be able to abstract away details correctly or design sensible workflows for boutique problems.
They can’t, this is the same shit that happened when the dipshit ceos sent dev jobs over seas to code farms. Devs lost their jobs, and the code went to shit. Then when shit started breaking, they magically rehired everyone again to spend years cleaning up the shit code. LLMs are this all over again, just quicker this time.
The problems start if it can take on a lot of the junior work. If nobody can enter the industry, nobody can get the experience required to do the real engineering.
Open-source and personal work may be the only way to enter the programming field in the next decade.
Now is the worst time to try to enter the field. We need to see the AI bubble burst much more spectacularly, and only then might it be more reasonable. You certainly don’t want to try to get into a field when you have a lot of other choices when that field is already flooded with all of these people who have been laid off, combined with the increased availability of programmers in other countries, knowing that at the moment many domestic programmers are not smart enough to form strong unions to protect their own jobs.
It was really hard in the mid 1980s to find a job as a new grad as all the Boomers who had been laid off during the recession were hired first as they had experience. It was McJobs or nothing unless you were a computer science/programming grad. Things have changed dramatically since then. It is a different world.
AIs will never be able to abstract away details correctly or design sensible workflows for boutique problems.
Not the current direction of AI, no. But the field is ever advancing. I won’t be shocked if we see AI capable of these things within my lifetime.
A lot of the things that current “AI” is doing exist since the 90s or even earlier. It is just that now the computational capacity is big enough to make much more complex looking inputs and results.
Construction jobs? Buddy. We can 3D print houses now.
Yet it’s not a popular way to do it, and multiple company closed after a few years of operating.
Someone still have to assemble it.
That’s what the 3D printer is doing.
Learn code anyway. LLMs can’t code worth a shit, so there will be plenty of jobs available to clean up their mess.
LLMs can’t code worth a shit yet. But techbros are determined to change that. The sad reality is that code is just a form of language, and LLMs are good at learning languages. They can’t code worth shit right now, but the progress likely will improve them.
We’ll still need experienced debuggers who can actually code. But in a decade, the broad strokes will likely be done by LLMs, which will vastly shrink the demand for experienced coders.
Lmfao the hardest part of building a product is understanding customer wants and needs. LLMs are incapable of understanding
You described project management
No, it’s the difference between software engineering and software development. If your project manager is handling that, your org is wack
If you’re not understanding why the spec is the way it is, you’re just creating job security for your replacement lol
As far as I’m concerned, my PM represents the customer(s). They spend time with customer feedback, the sales and executive teams to strategize with the company first. I ain’t got time for all that bs.
If that’s not how you work, it’s probably just a smaller org where people have to wear more hats. Nothin’ wrong with that.
I thought that was just the job we give people who are trying their best but can’t really anything.
The sad reality is that code is just a form of language, and LLMs are good at learning languages.
This is debatable. LLMs are prediction machines.
What use is prediction when you are trying to code something new?
The vast majority of coding isn’t making something new, it’s using existing patterns and tools and arranging them to fit a specific use case.
Llms may not be able to create a new framework or design pattern, but neither will most coders in there day to day.
The vast majority of coding isn’t making something new, it’s using existing patterns and tools and arranging them to fit a specific use case.
I would argue that arranging something to fit a specific use case is making something new.
Ask any designer how difficult it is to get a spec sheet from a client and meet their expectations. We’re expecting LLMs to suddenly solve this problem.
Llms may not be able to create a new framework or design pattern
Until they can do this, there is little threat to designers. There will be less grunt work, of course.
Tbh this whole thing made me realize what we really need is a modular automated code bank. There’s so much duplication of effort it’s honestly absurd.
Right we’ve got this scattershot network of libraries but no one’s really been up to the task of taking the next logical steps.
Open source, libraries, frameworks and language development is how this is tackled.
Making software is implementing business logic. It’s the specific nature of whatever problem you are solving which means you can’t use some existing off-the-shelf product.
There are dozens (if not hundreds) of no-code/low-code app builders out there. Things like n8n or ndoe-red.
They get very difficult to maintain at scale.
Right now they are. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.
Compared to just 20 years ago we’re living in the future. You may not have noticed the progress because you’d expect the future to includes hoverboards.
Right now they are. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
We do. Experienced programmers who have been promised we’re about to be obsolete several times, now. For many of us, this isn’t our first rodeo.
As an expert in computers, there’s two things I can guarantee about the future of computers:
- Computers will just keep getting smarter.
- After decades of getting smarter, computers remain deeply stupid in ways that non-experts cannot imagine. However dumb you think your computer might be, I promise it’s somehow significantly dumber than that.
Typical pork cycle. By the time everybody was pushed towards IT/Coding and all the hundred ways to get into IT popped up, there were already too many people wanting an IT job. You were basically called stupid if you didn’t “just learn to code” to get a well paid, stable job. It’s your own fault for chosing a manual labor job instead of applying yourself and learning some coding skills! So everybody was pushed towards IT and made to feel stupid if they didn’t try to learn coding.
See, if you were really smart, you’d learn how to engineer software to construct things. 😌
