In my mind, I've concluded that I have less than 3 years to find an off ramp.
I'm looking for an offramp as well. I truly love software so it's a hard reality to contend with at times. Regardless, I'm not a software engineer at my core. I'm a problem solver, and I love creating things. This is transferable. I'm not sure where to yet, but I'm certainly capable of making a move. I hope I have more than 3 years, though.
As someone else asked, I'm curious where you're headed or thinking of heading so far.
I think the immediate future is bright. Some will try to cram this technology into enterprise. It will do well. Those jobs will die. Others will leverage it alongside the more creative engineering tasks—they will thrive.
Eventually, what we call software will change from what it is today into something much more accessible to these types of tools. The plateau we've landed on is just a compromise between the technology, economies, and culture of its time.
As this type of tech pervades our everyday lives, much of the widespread need for specialized software will evaporate. The remaining work will be in the corners or the edges of what's possible—highly technical or vertically integrated work (particularly, hardware-integrated stuff), as well as platform engineering to sustain the new paradigm.
That's a very good point. There's that tongue-in-check assertion that Java as a language isn't a human-facing but rather a tool-facing programming language. And now I'm wondering, what would a high-level language that is actually designed from the ground up for manipulation by AIs rather than humans look like. And in contrast, I think that the human-facing interface to it might end up much more visual and graph-oriented, possibly similar to Unreal Engine's blueprints.
I expect that we're moving into a phase of AIs talking to AIs, and initially it'll be wasteful (because it'll be mostly English), but eventually, they'll derive their own language and seamlessly upgrade protocols when they determine they're talking to an AI. No clue how that will come about or what that language will look like, but honestly, it's kind of exciting.
Really interesting to think about how they might handle context, as well. Even though we have much bigger context windows (and they'll only get larger), context management is still a resource-management issue, which we'll probably continue to refine, as well. Imagine different strategies for managing both what is brought into the context of each request, as well as what form it could take (level of detail, additional references or commentary on it, etc). Things could get really unreadable even in English, and still be very interpretable for an LLM.
W.r.t. the graph-oriented interfaces, are you thinking something like Node-RED [1]? I'm seeing more and more people mention having LLMs produce non-text or structured outputs, like JSON, UI, and other things. Easy to imagine an LLM that wires together various open-source platforms, on-demand. Something like Node-RED for pipelines/functions, some UI tools for visualization/interactivity, other platforms for messaging, etc...
This change is roughly analogous to the shift from punch cards to compilers. It's just a more "natural language" way to do programming. A lot of the drudgery associated with coding will go away and competent programmers will shift to higher level design work.
Even in a future where AI is better than human software engineers at every single programming task (which I don't believe will be the case any time soon), there is still comparative advantage. AI will not have the _capacity_ to do every single programming task and there's going to still be lots of work for people to do.
THis is exactly what I want.
I dont want to describe some enterprise architure with DR and blah.
No - I want the little utils that I just want to appear like little magic fairy dust...
Little apps. This is how a new eco system grows.
As a tangent, I've been thinking about this in regards to the edtech space. For now, the focus is on GenAI tools for quickly building courses, but if we have AI with the combined skills of a Subject Matter Expert, Instructional Designer and Tutor, why would we need to build courses at all, if instead it could just teach anyone anything on the fly, based on their specific background and interests, and adapting immediately to their reactions?
We've already been talking a lot about bubbles / echo chambers over the last decade, and I imagine that this will get a lot worse/better over the coming decade, depending on your perspective of the value of shared experiences.
"Generative AI will mean that Pixar movies will be made by AI!" Likelier it means that generative AI will create an entirely new medium beyond movies.
"Surely if we generate code, it means we can replace developers right?"
Well no, it's not nearly enough. Good code generation with a UI is already a thing since the 90s, it's replacing developers as much as Frontpage and WordPress do.
The average developer writes 100 lines per day anyways so the speed of writing those lines doesn't matter.
Software is an interpersonal job at core and the most precise definition of a business.
The day software engineers are replaced by a machine, there's no job for the CEO itself honestly and that's also why this job is well paid. I'm sure it will be all over LinkedIn though, despite this paradox.
Those new tools will be there in the background but cannot replace a software engineer.
Now everyone seems to be a "doomer" like me. I was too stupid to see that people (especially online) were lashing out at me as a coping mechanism. The worst part is that even though I had my "we're fucked" realization was earlier than many others, I didn't really do anything productive, I didn't make the right moves to pivot, I had no plan. Now I have a rough ~3-year off ramp plan, just like everyone else.
I suspect that there are many, many recent grads in my position, who also thought they were taking crazy pills when everyone around them dismissed their concerns
They don't know how the industry works or what it needs, few of them them know how the technology works or what it's realistic near-term prospects are let alone the long-term ones, and none of them have lived long enough to understand the pace of a technology moving from discovery through to maturity and commercialization.
If you look to your experienced seniors instead of your peers, you'll discover two things:
1. They don't respect most contemporary juniors because of the industry boom and are happy to see most of you scare yourselves off
2. They're narrowing in on a familiar, respectful appreciation of recent content generators and their potential for assisting some basic use cases (highly valuable technology!) and are increasingly of the opinion that both the hype and fear of Q1/2023 was largely market manipulation by VC's trying to squeeze another boom out as money was tightening
But something changed in the past 4 months or so. I used to see the two things you described, but now I see seniors repeating the same thing juniors (whom they ridiculed) used to say. Look at this very thread, for example. People are starting to realize that even if these AI startups are making ridiculous promises, the tech might be way more than just hype/smoke and mirrors.
I've read quite a few comments in HN, and right here in this thread, that say something along the lines of "I'll be fine... It's the juniors I'm worried about".
I have a multi-part plan. Immediately, i'm working to get closer to the business. To be closer to the position of defining requirements, not implementing requirements.
Secondary, i'm experimenting with ideas I hope can become a business.
as a final fallback, I have a hobby woodshop in my basement, and I love making furniture.
Programmers will be fine. The AI plagiarism engines are severely limited, and will be for the forseeable future. Maybe someday i'll be equivalent to the ren-faire blacksmith, but I'm gonna do this until I die.