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yetihehe

I will say it again and again - AI will replace developers like excel and accounting programs replaced accountants.

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An old (2015) NPR Planet Money story about VisiCalc.

Episode 606: Spreadsheets! https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/25/389027988/epis...

The 1984 story it was inspired by (acording to the episode description).

https://medium.com/backchannel/a-spreadsheet-way-of-knowledg...

There are of course still accountants.

Didn’t they though? I’m sure accounting firms hired way more accountants back in the days of paper records. AI definitely won’t rid society of the developer role, but there will certainly be fewer employment opportunities.

There is already fewer employment opportunities, because big tech firms hired anyone they could and let them sit on unimportant things. At this moment, AI is used mostly as a convenient excuse to "trim the fat". Of course, it's a catastrophe for those fired programmers, but the good ones will find a job or create a new one.

Are there fewer accountants now than there were in 1985?

Also relevant, do companies find it hard to hire accountants now?

Which is how? This is an honest question, I genuinely don't know what happened to all the people who used to be employed to do manual calculations. Or all the people who worked as typists for that matter.

I took it for irony, that is, accountants weren't replaced by Excel. There are thousands of articles right now of course that accountants will be replaced by AI.

Of course, but my question stands. Did all the people who used to do easily automatable clerical work remain in those roles? I presume that isn't the case, but like I say I don't really know what happened to them.

> Did all the people who used to do easily automatable clerical work remain in those roles?

My words were pretty precise. Current version of AI only works as the automatable part of programming, like writing boilerplate and implementing some algorithms already known.

Accountants still must know how to do by hand everything that their programs do and currently are mostly data entry clerks who connect proper invoices to proper accounts and verify that everything works properly. But one or maybe two times a month something is not right and then you are very glad you have an accountant or two at hand.

Similarly this will be with programmers - a lot of boilerplate and glue code will change into "implement X with library Y and output in format Z" prompts, but I think the most exciting (for me) things like actually solving problems will be left for us programmers.

I would also like to work on more fun stuff! My uncertainty is whether enough fun paid programming work will appear to fill the gap left by the automation of the boring stuff.

I think a lot of people here are more interested in questions like "how am I going to pay my mortgage in future?" rather than specifically whether the job title of "software developer" will continue to exist (which I agree it probably will).

Computers (what is a job title) were entirely replaced, but they were already on their way out for decades. The people on that job migrated up or down into programming and office assistance. Eventually (way into the 90s) the number of office assistants declined.

Accountants didn't stop increasing in numbers.

Accountants are the only folks with the knowledge and skills to actually use the tools correctly that were to supposedly replace accountants... ;)

(Much the same as programmers will be replaced by "A.I." ... They won't as long as they educate themselves on proper use of the tools available to them. It'll likely someday be like the "Star Trek" computers, but even they still needed folks with the technical skills to use those computers well / properly.)

Tons of accountants were replaced by excel though, just not all of them.

Do you mind clarifying your point? Are you implying excel didn’t replace accountants? As a CPA and software engineer I can tell you that I left the accounting industry because accountants had been replaced. Wages are abysmally low for a field that required a graduate degree to sit for the CPA exam, and the industry has been in a crisis mode with a shortage of entrants.

Accounting has probably been hit significantly harder by offshoring than by tools like excel, but the market for it is not what I would consider healthy. Excel making it easier for offshore talent is also a possibility. Further, the industry has been decimated due to a lack of union / organization. The AICPA allowing people in India and the Philippines to become CPAs has been devastating to US CPA wages.

Accordingly I find your original comparison of software engineering to accounting a bit concerning!

I clarified in another comment[0].

> and the industry has been in a crisis mode with a shortage of entrants.

The accountants I know are well paid. Not everyone of course, there are some that are bad at their job and there are some good ones. Many are essentially working like programming freelancers. There will still be a lot of clients that can't even request AI to do some simple programs for them but are willing to do some small programming work and have some money to pay a freelancing programmer to create some small solution for them.

> Accordingly I find your original comparison of software engineering to accounting a bit concerning!

In my original post, I was telling that some programmers will indeed be replaced. The programming field will probably migrate like accounting field. It WILL be concerning for a lot of programmers, but programming as a field will be here to stay like accounting.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44086476

Thanks for the clarification. Personally, I view accounting as a dying industry in America. The number of well paid accountants is few and decreasing each year. If programming follows that path, it will be devastating for the industry.

Some statistics on US accounting trends[0]:

- As a direct result of enrollment declines in accounting programs, candidates sitting for the CPA exam have also decreased from 48,004 first-time candidates in 2016 to 32,188 in 2021, a drop of 33% - 7% decrease from 2021 to 2022 for the total number of candidates taking the CPA exam - 2022 saw the lowest number of exam takers since 2006 - 30% fewer candidates passed their final section of the CPA exam in 2021 compared to 2016 - the AICPA has stated that roughly 75% of its members are at retirement age - Accounting graduates trended downward in the 2019–2020 academic year, with decreases of 2.8% and 8.4% at the bachelor’s and master’s levels, respectively

Having gone through public accounting myself, and knowing hundreds of accountants, It’s not a career path I recommend others follow whereas computer science and software engineering is one I still recommend. Accounting has largely gone overseas. There are not enough partner positions at the big firms or smaller, local firms to supply enough work for accountants. At least software engineering still has the unlimited growth potential that software enables.

[0]: https://www.cpajournal.com/2024/11/25/the-accounting-profess...

1000x more reporting requirements?

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