I think we will see this lead to a boost in software developer employment.
And I agree. Because ultimately we don’t need that much code in the first place. We need robust data sets.
AI models will enable the data driven machine state dream. Chips that self improve models will boot strap from them and rely on humans to iteratively improve updates.
Coding like it’s 1970 in the 2020s and beyond is not that high tech.
And even with reviews you can currently plausibly automate only the code correctness check part, the juicy part of reviews is always manual testing of the change and doing the logical reasoning if the change is doing a meaningful thing. And no, the ticket with the spec is not a reliable source of this info for an LLM as it's always just a partial understanding of the concept.
I don’t think ai will replace the career of software development but I do think the tools we will be using to to it will be dramatically different.
Software developers do X and Y. AI thing can now do X, so it's used for that, and it's cheaper, so the number of projects increase because you get more demand at a lower price. Those projects each need someone to do Y.
The rest is coming up with SDDs and reviewing AI’s code.
I can easily see most devs, doctors and lawyers automated away in the next couple of years.
I am overemployed with 3 dev jobs at once. AI is writing virtually all my code and letting me nap all day. Eventually that will end once people see the power of them.
Even a perfect eval loop like failing tests end up 80% of the time with them creating something way too complicated since they solve one visible but not root issue at a time and build on top of that hacky foundation until again I end up reverting it all
You can tell it “implement feature X” and it’ll go and do whatever’s easiest for it, often something dumb, that’s when people usually think “it’s dumb, won’t replace devs” and give up. Or you can nail down your requirements by talking to it and describing what you’re looking for, often it comes back with things you hadn’t considered or ways of doing things you didn’t know. Then just tell it “implement this SDD” and watch it one shot it in an hour or so.
There’s also pain points - some languages like Swift have changed so often and there’s little open source code to train on out there, so it’s on the worse side if you do iOS development.
It’s a new skill that needs working at, but in the end your output is significantly increased.
The claim you're arguing against is that AI will replace software engineering as a discipline. Seems like you're instead saying that it will increase developer productivity, which no one disagrees with.
Obviously we’re not yet at the point where the CEO can enter “build me the next Uber” in Claude Code and watch the stock price go up.
This "solution" is to a problem the GOP created themselves during Trump's first term, when they made the R&D deduction stuff expire in 2022.
Seriously, that seems unlikely.
Changes like this may have an impact on employment but it’s impossible to observe the results in a vacuum.
Given that most large companies are towing the “AI means less jobs required” line, it seems likely that this will, at best, modestly slow the rate at which companies divest themselves of software developers.
I cant see any reasonable reason, in a broader context, this would have a meaningful impact.
(Yeah yeah, AI means more jobs one day maybe, but right now that is categorically not true, and the future is always pure speculation, but in the near term, the impact of this seems like it probably wont be material to me; maybe a small reduction in the number of layoffs)
A significant amount of software dev employment is in startups. Companies that are spending on development, but aren't making much money yet, will see a huge benefit from this. The change in tax liability could mean a single seed or series A round paying for an extra 1-2 devs.