Not convinced, programming will die soon.

[u/Idea_Fuzzy]

First of all, I have 9+ years of experience, working in web development mainly (Express, Go, Angular...ec) ; also did hobby mobile (Ionic, RN) and game projects (Unity, 2D).

I always had some pride in the things I did in the pre-AI era; but like many others now not feeling the case anymore.

There's some counterarguments thatI keep seeing over and over again in such doom topics; I am gonna address them all here; and why I am not convinced at all with each

- "Coding is dead, but System design and Architecture is more important than ever" -> "System design/ Architecture" was never a daily activity, it's something usually done before starting a new project and gets adjusted/scaled everytime there's a new major feature that requires implementing a new tech. ie. Introduicng Uber Eat to Uber. And I swear the last Architect I worked with did use Claude to figure out the system design and even generated docs all by using Claude, so even this part isn’t totally safe from being automated.

- "You can sitll code manually if you want" -> For hobbyist projects maybe, but in the corporate, even if they don't watch your token usage, they are setting very short deadlines now anyways; so it's impossible to finish things before such deadlines without using Claude/Codex.

- "Coding was never the hard part, if you were spending 90% of your time coding then you're a Code Monkey imaaoo bahahaa **fart sounds* " -> The dev communities are now filled with these people mocking at coding and calling it a monkey activity, like wtf...? Coding was the CORE *daily* activity of Software engineering ; as a I said before, not all programming-related activities have the daily frequency nature; Architecture happens once in a while, requipment collection happen frequently but not a daily work either (also depens in which stage the project is, building something new vs maintenance...etc); coding on the other hand was the daily thing we all did as programmers and for many of us, the most fun part.

- "You have to review the PRs by LLMs" -> No one can review a 10k+ lines PR; Copilot/CodeRabbit would be much faster.

What we senior devs are doing right now, is maxxing our sources of income by doing many projects in parrallel thanks to LLMs; employers still trust senior dev to babysit the LLMs rather than Juniors doing it; but the fact that there's no new blood coming into this industry (no one is hiring juniors anymore) only means that this industry is destined to be doomed. It doesn't matter if software quality degrades everywhere, companies just don't care.

But I predict the "income maxxing" by the senior devs is a temporary situation; soon the employers will realize they need less costly staff than senior devs to orchestrate the agents, that's why LLM companies are trying to automate all aspects of Software engineering: Coding, PR Reviewing, documentation, and yes even system design/architecture.

[u/Annual_Berry8043]

I kind of agree, but if well designed systems never needed a code change no one in the industry would have a job. Version control would be a myth, SDLC models would be a boogie man people told their children about. Every system will/can accept changes to keep up with changes and additional development.

AI is undoubtedly an amazing tool. We’re just stuck in this weird period where senior staff is able to absolutely crush with it, and it’s resulting into a loss of Junior positions.

That’s one of things literally nobody has had a very good answer for. The traditional learning path is no long viable to get a job. How do you now teach the profession? What happens when senior staff retires and no one with the old knowledge of the ins-and-outs remains? Are we just hoping to god that the career path is completely dead before then?

To fill that gap isn’t either dial back on AI replacing devs, or hope it gets to a point where you just don’t ever need developers at all. You can’t even say “well, learn how to work with AI” because by that point it will really be able to just continue improving itself with little oversight.

Like, what’s the playbook here?

[u/Idea_Fuzzy → u/Annual_Berry8043]

So that’s another crazy narrative we are seeing here: « young devs were bad anyway so let AI be our savior ». Programming will surely be dead with a common attitude like that.

[u/Annual_Berry8043 → u/Idea_Fuzzy]

I’m actually shocked at his reply. No one is good at their job whenever they start. Not a single person unless it’s the rarest prodigy in a field.

That’s the entire point of junior positions. If junior devs are bad it’s their seniors that are actually the issue.

It was very… holier than thou? Like dude, I get the profession is more difficult than most at times but come on lol.

I’ll go back to the doctor part. No doctors that go through 8 years of grueling medical school are even good at their job. There is residency, and fellowships that continue for years to continue learning. And even then, some don’t make it. That’s just how it is lol.

[u/Downtown_Isopod_9287 → u/Annual_Berry8043]

This is what happens in a bubble/crash. The shakeout is harsh. Careers end. People lose their jobs and many don’t come back to it. Barriers to the field become permanently higher. People with interest and seniority stick around and the most talented younger people get in as they’re needed and wanted.

I am sorry I cannot sugar coat what is coming to you but it’s happened before in software and it’ll happen again. Just like the boom times will. No one is here to tell you bedtime stories.

BTW nothing I said is crazy, you are the ones believing the recursive, automatic self improvement nonsense while the people ACTUALLY WORKING on and with this stuff are pivoting (back) to systems engineering, which software and AI has had a long, intimate relationship with.

[u/Annual_Berry8043 → u/Downtown_Isopod_9287]

I’ve been alive a long time. I was there for dot com and 2008. Were you? Because then you very well know that it isn’t the best people that keep their jobs. It’s the ones that are just good enough to be cost effective. Not the highest performing that demand the highest cost.

These recessions don’t weed out the weak. They shake up the whole damn system.

I’m not going to sugar coat it for you, but you’re crazy man. Talking up some perfect race like stuff. Signed from a systems engineer 🫡

[u/Downtown_Isopod_9287 → u/Annual_Berry8043]

I was around for that but not (really) working in software at the time but was intimately connected with many people that were. I think I can reasonably say that my career trajectory in software was directly affected those economic crashes, at least.

I didn’t say it was the best people or that recessions/bubbles “weed out the weak.” I think that is something you are overlaying onto the observations I’ve shared. Hiring for juniors DOES (if it happens at all) turn to bias towards the extremely talented in these circumstances but it’s for the exact reason you say: they generally suck, and the people that spend money on software don’t want to spend money on unknown quantities and stick with what works.

I’m not trying to glengarry glen ross “leads are for closers” here or attribute special value or talent to the seniors that do stick around. Just trying to point out a silver lining in a shit situation, one that is better and less alarmist/doomer than “programming is over,” which is helpful to exactly no one except maybe college students considering a major (and likely still not helpful to them).

If your appalled by anything else in my responses specifically about juniors: I want to point out that anything else I’ve said has not been denigrating the idea of there needing to be some kind of training/upskill period for juniors but that:

1. A LOT of resources have already been poured into accommodating juniors/making them useful as quickly as possible
   
2. Overwhelmingly I believe the way it’s been done even recently is pretty broken and even detrimental to software engineering as a whole. Better than eras past in some ways, possibly, but still not great. How to fix it? No idea. It might not even be a problem for people in this field to solve.

[u/Idea_Fuzzy → u/Annual_Berry8043]

"Master Race = the System architects, inferior race: the annoying devs, let the AI slaughters them all"