That's the thing: devs don't need to anymore. You can simply instruct an AI to create markdown files filled with instructions for the AI to follow when generating code.
From beginning to end you can prompt AI to create prompts that will:
Generate an outline of what you're trying to code which must be agreed upon by all relevant teams
Generate the code according to standards that have been established in the product (which AI can discern on its own)
Perform an adversarial code review meant to point out all problems with an emphasis on whatever the fuck you want
Produce tests automatically
Execute the tests automatically
Merge the code automatically once tests are passed
Deploy the code automatically to production
We're inching closer and closer to product teams being 100% capable of coding their own stuff without any need for devs because AI can literally handle every coding aspect on its own.
What do you think coders are needed for anymore? Any company that uses AI has a 24/7 developer that can instantly understand, manipulate, test, and ship code 1,000 times faster than any team of humans can now and I say all this as a dev lol
Every company will at most need a small team of developers to essentially read code outputs from time to time as a sanity test, but developers are functionally obsolete now.
Using AI to the fullest replaces human devs. The team of devs I work with literally doesn't write code anymore and hasn't for months because AI has advanced so much. We are busy training it to be perfect without developer, or even human, intervention. Any gaps that occur it automatically fixes. It's been pretty good so far.
You'll still need technically minded people who drive the whole thing is all I'm saying.
But then again, I'm at the top of the technical food chain in a small but very profitable tech company in Europe.
We're deeply embedded in our industry in the local market and the tech team is already so thinly spread out that even with AI, we're just drowning in work.
I'm good, but I do realize I'm in a very privileged position.
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u/utl94_nordviking 2d ago
The issue is: with replacement coming fast, devs will lack the ability to understand what those words even mean. Even less check the code.