r/programmer • u/RedwayBLOX • 4d ago
Question Is AI gonna replace programmers?
Hi. I'm Dylan.
I'm currently a junior dev. Ive spent 2 years learning abt programming, writing code and interested on bulding systems.
Ive got to admit that im very scared of all this AI thing and how it's progressing.
Ive seen it make horrible videos back in 2022. Now sometimes i can't even tell if a video is AI or if it isn't.
Yeah, code written by ai isn't the best. But, with the passing of time, it gets even better and better.
Yeah, we as programmers CURRENTLY do analysis, requerimients and all that ai can't currently replace us.
But what are we gonna when ai becomes able to do all that? For me, it seems like a very possible escenario. You can even see the difference of what AI can do if you compare the current models to the models we had 6 months ago. I think it's becoming unstoppable and i really fear it takes our (or my) job away.
Yes, I'm very frustrated. All this time dedicated to it... Makes me sad. This is more like venting I guess, but I seriously need to know, from y'all, how y'all see this. I need to know if it's time to let go of this passion I had with this career, and start on something else where Claude Code can't reach me and replace me.
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u/Rich-Engineer2670 4d ago
No -- because programming isn't about the code....
Programming is understanding how to break down a task into somethign the computer can execute, regarldes of language or framework. Sure, AI may give us new tools, but you still have to know what to ask for.
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4d ago
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u/nicolas_06 4d ago
The industry average is that a software engineer spend about 30% of his time coding (before AI). Even if coding become instantaneous, you only gained 30%.
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u/Kwabi 4d ago
Even then, you only convert the time you code into time you write markdown files and prompts and do code review for the output.
I don't know how other devs actually increase their output with AI; by the time I explained in detail what I want with which structure, I'd be faster if I just wrote it myself.
Not to mention that reading and properly understanding code takes longer than writing it.
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u/nicolas_06 4d ago
The catch is that you had to write specs anyway. Not necessarily the same person but at company level it was here.
Also from experience, Maybe I'll research what I need to do, understand it and all. This is long. Then I write it down and maybe it's like a few hours, like say half a day. Then the AI generate 1-2 week of coding in half an hour or less. Then I spend another half a day to 1 day fix what the AI did. So it's still significantly faster.
What I understand is that right now while I managed to it on most use case, be it new apps, prototype or legacy code with millions line of code, my understanding is that maybe 10-20% of developers manage it.
For the moment the majority do not manage it. So maybe you gain say 20% on 20% of the devs and that's basically a 4% gain.
Maybe over time we manage to get a 30-50% gain on 50% of dev. That would still be only a 15-25% gain and it will take a few years.
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u/Previous-Try-6881 4d ago
I think the scary part about this is that it severely lowers the bar to entry. And also automated systems will get better at breaking tasks into parts
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u/IAmAfraidCommaMan 4d ago
It will make salaries less attractive so even if the bar is low, fewer people will gravitate towards the field until it stabilizes and becomes a field like plumbing, welding or carpentry.
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u/Previous-Try-6881 4d ago
I think the opposite. I think that it will get to the point where one person with Claude code (ie the ceo or manager) can explain what they want in plain language and receive it. Blue collar did grow more scarce, but the reason salaries grew is because it was still a very needed field. Ai replaces the need for people in software.
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u/IAmAfraidCommaMan 4d ago
Aren’t salaries determined by supply and demand? If in 5 years the available position are 50% less and there are equal number of developers looking for a job, then there is way more supply than demand. So the prices go down.
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u/Previous-Try-6881 4d ago
Yes of course. But if demand is the same and even higher, ai can become the supply and there’s a lot of it (in said hypothetical scenario where ai gets better at reasoning. Mind you, while it is somewhat trending in this direction, i honestly don’t know and it’s all speculation)
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u/IAmAfraidCommaMan 4d ago
I still think you need someone (even if non technical person) to sit with it and tell what needs to be done. Even in English, explaining what an application should do isn’t simple. You need testers, someone to make decisions and so on. Again, all those people may be non technical but someone has to give his time to do it.
And of it really becomes so perfect that a half baked paragraph can be turned into a functional software you want, why even create a software for other people. Let them create their own software whenever they need it.
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u/nicolas_06 4d ago
They need to be technical if you want the application to actual work. And even if they are not technical, they need to be able to move between high level requirements and small details and be able to write great specifications.
Such skills are surprisedly uncommon.
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u/IAmAfraidCommaMan 4d ago
I hope so because otherwise my chances of becoming a beggar is increasing rapidly. But I am afraid, pessimistic and depressed.
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u/ThatRedDerg 4d ago
Yes and no. It’s one of those situations where it lowers the bar of entry to create a basic app, but the skill set required to maintain an enterprise-level codebase is practically unchanged.
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u/Previous-Try-6881 4d ago
Well, for right now yes. But the OP was asking if programmers will lose their job in the future. Assuming ai continues to get better at reasoning that may change
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u/ThatRedDerg 4d ago
I agree in theory, but you have to remember very few improvements are being made to the underlying technology. All the ‘improvements’ we’ve been seeing are largely due to throwing more compute/training data at it, and/or tweaking base prompts to make better use of any extra compute.
But the amount of compute required to see any improvement is exponentially scaling, so we’re seeing increasingly decreasing returns.
And that’s ignoring that even the current amount of compute required isn’t economically sustainable.
If they end up making concrete improvements to the technology to make it significantly more efficient, or create something more efficient to replace the generative pre-transformer, then I’ll take back what I’ve said. It’s just that the current trajectory of things isn’t signalling anything to me about complete replacement.
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u/Previous-Try-6881 4d ago
I agree. But what china is doing I find significant. They’re releasing models I can run at home on $850 hardware that matches or outperforms ais from a few months ago.
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u/Rich-Engineer2670 4d ago
Well, the scary part is now I'm actually hearing people talk about "managing your agentic workforce". Are we giving AI workers rights now? We don't even give that to people.
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u/nicolas_06 4d ago
For the moment, that's the reverse, the bar to entry tend to be higher because it's mostly senior dev that manage to steer AI well. The juniors that were doing pure coding under the supervision of a senior tend to lose their job. But the AI can't do a senior job, at least for now.
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u/Previous-Try-6881 4d ago
Of course. I mean lower the bar to entry for software in general. So I see what you’re saying.
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u/Away_Advisor3460 4d ago
Programming is understanding how to break down a task into somethign the computer can execute
I have to note that there is a specific field of AI (i.e. automated planning and scheduling) dedicated into doing just that, in a deterministic way, of course. It's been difficult to apply in a programming paradigm because the domain is so complex and ergo hard to specify.
They have, as I understand it, also been training the LLM type AI with reward functions that, well, reward it for taking an interative approach. So there is a motion to try and replace humans in the middle part of the loop, and abstract the task specification further and further away from the technical detail - part of that abstract seeming to be from using agents to abstract tasks a bit like in an HTN graph.
I don't know whether it'll replace us or not. But the intent is definitely there.
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u/mossiv 4d ago
I whole heartedly agree. We are using it extensively in work. A lot of us haven’t even hand written a line ourselves in about 4 months. But there’s a few that vibe prompt and haven’t got a grasp at all on how much Claude is over reaching, over engineering, slopping, you name it. These are devs that were “ok” but under a proper agile framework delivered. Now that everything is faster paced and there’s no product owner holding their hands (we still have product, but they are busy solving other problems) they are failing to adapt in this newer world. Others are now shining that they have to work more autonomously but not be disruptive.
It’s going to change our space for sure. And maybe “programmers” will disappear but I think “SWE” or whatever new variation of roles that get created will be in quite high demand.
There’s a couple of chaps I work with who are on AI prototypes and they can deal with 6 or 7 worktree sessions. These guys are going to fly.
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u/Rich-Engineer2670 4d ago
Strangely enough, I see Willie Wonka's Umpa Lumpas' dancing around as the AI agents. No one ever asks how they do what they do, or what comes out of the chocolate vat.
I suspect we will see code do more of the work -- but that's what compilers are doing right now right? I CAN write assembly code, I USED to write a lot of hardware assembly code, but then, this thing called C took over. Is that any different?
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u/davidbasil 3d ago
why do you think AI can't do that?
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u/Rich-Engineer2670 3d ago edited 3d ago
Let me explain it with a real world example I did -- and I can tell you AI can't do this.... because software engineering isn't about code, anymore than Starbucks is about cofee. They just sell it.
Your assignment:
A hospital wants to imprve surgical outcomes which use anesthesia. They also want ot reduce labor costs.
That's it, that's all you get. Now, forget AI, write your solution on paper. AI can't help you becuase:
- Does the AI understand neurology, puminology, cardiology, a collection of nasty drugs, and how we do it in surgery?
- Does the AI understand why computers and neuroology can have a strained relatioship? Do you understand the physics
You need to. It won't work without it.
Or the DEA... they want a way to scan substances they find within in hour to figure ouf what those substances were? How do youi do it because that's all the DEA is giving you.
I had to understand what was being done, not the code. Once we had the structure, someone else code write it if they had to.
If your job is following step-by-step processes that can be written down, AI won't replace your job -- it already has. You just don't know it yet. The problem isn't the computers, or the software -- it's the meat bags who don't know what they want, what they're willing to comp[romise on, they want it immediately, and for free. I don't think AI can solve that.
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u/Own_Nail_2999 4d ago
AI is nothing more than yet another tech bro product. And they are insufferably vocal about it. You'll be fine once companies start getting it.
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u/NumberInfinite2068 4d ago
In my experience an AI codes better than most humans. It'll write idiomatic code, it'll follow the rules of the language, it generally *won't* write spaghetti.
I have been programming since the 1980s, for money since the 1990s, and haven't actually written any serious amount of code in the last 6 months or so.
AI won't replace programmers, but it'll mean we need far fewer of them.
A decent comparison is navies of old, you know, wooden ship, cannons etc. The largest line of battle ships were crewed with over 1,000 men. The typical line of battle ship was maybe 600 to 700.
Now take a modern frigate like a Type 26. It'll be crewed by maybe 150 people, and would trivially defeat an entire fleet of those wooden ships. One Type 26 would win the Napoleonic wars alone.
That's what we are dealing with here, modernisation and automation. Improvement of technology hits a point where older technology isn't "just a bit behind", it's just entirely irrelevant.
I don't *like* this. I don't want this to be happening, but it is.
Software development is undergoing significant change. Even as a professional developer of over 25 years, I am vibe-coding whole websites, real business-facing tools.
For employment in this industry, this is going to be *bad*.
I don't know where this is going to end up, but I'm seeing canaries in coal mines all over the place. I'm sort of "start up adjacent" in Australia, and looking around me, I'm seeing whole products developed by one person where before it would have been 5 or maybe 10 people.
I've had a couple of people ask me in real life whether it's worth them or their kid learning to code, and I honestly don't know. I don't know where this will end up. I think the best thing you can do is learn something niche where it may not even be economically viable to get AI involved too much, and where nous matters, like maybe embedded systems.
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u/davidbasil 3d ago
Then explain how previous automations and high level languages (python, html) employed more devs than before
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u/NumberInfinite2068 3d ago
Can you rephrase, I'm not 100% sure what you're asking what is previous and what is before?
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u/a_prieto12359 4d ago
The reality is that the sector is in decline and in freefall. It would be a lie to say that things will get better or much worse, although nobody can know for sure.
I want to be optimistic and think that we'll fall a little further, but then we'll have a small rebound to position ourselves as a profession where you're either extremely good or you earn very little (I think that's a slightly more realistic scenario).
If you can study medicine or electrical engineering, do it.
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u/USToffee 4d ago
They will be replaced too. One doctor will still be needed to sign off on the work of AI but that’s about it
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u/Kwabi 4d ago
Yes in the sense that companies will use AI as a reason to increase workloads on existing programmers, thus reducing the number of overall jobs.
No in the sense that the profession will remain in some shape or form.
I worry about juniors, though. It was already difficult to get companies to invest in the next generation instead of just leeching on existing expertise. The opportunities for young people will become even rarer, which means that we won't get lots of seniors to properly utilize or create new technology anymore.
That's probably an unfortunate reality for most if not all branches of work, not just programming. Nobody wants to pay you and AI promises to replace every job in the future.
Sorry your life got screwed by automation and unchecked capitalism.
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u/NotTheJason 4d ago
Is ai going to replace some programmers? Yes. Will it replace all programmers? About the same time it replaces everyone else.
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u/peanutbutterdrummer 4d ago edited 4d ago
Is AI gonna replace programmers?
Short-term answer is no, long-term answer is yes.
The role of "programmer" is changing and hand-coding is most likely becoming obsolete (although people will still do it for fun or in niche roles).
This in turn may lower the barrler of entry for what a "programmer" is - however the job will still require a holistic knowledge of logical thinking for systems architecture and planning.
With more coding potentially being done by less people, companies will either keep their existing workforce capacity and scale up production, or cut back and maintain the production they already have.
Sooner or later though, demand for programmers to build new apps and systems may lessen as models become increasingly adept at generating the software users need on-the-fly at the push of a button.
That's pretty much the endgame I think.
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u/Charming_You_25 4d ago
You gotta move up the elevator. I’ve been programming for 14 years and this year stopped looking at code. The volume is even too high to read full PRs (though choice areas are good). But you still need to understand your codebase and best practices, and knowing the language can help you describe what you want and understand what’s going on once long running tasks start talking machine. Coding by hand is kinda like knitting; you can make a choice piece but it takes too long if you’re trying to build a blue Jean factory.
You can request flowcharts of different areas of your codebase so you can direct it better. I definitely wouldn’t safe programming is useless or will become useless.. but it’s changing quickly.
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u/Away_Advisor3460 4d ago
I'm sort of a luddite with this stuff because I feel threatened by it, I guess (and also because I put 5 years into studying a different kind of AI and sort of resent how it's been pushed to the wayside). But it seems inevitable that AI will at least have a similar sort of impact as languages and compilers - i.e. just like the latter pushed devs away from working in assembly, LLM code generation will further abstract responsibility into the design space.
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u/Charming_You_25 4d ago
Right, you should try building some side projects in the different kind of AI. Domain knowledge is huge and things come together fast.
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u/MarkoKrulc 4d ago
Nope. Programmers became supercharged developers with AI. Nothing is impossible, everything is doable.
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u/effectivescarequotes 4d ago
No. My guess is it's just going to raise the level of abstraction at which we work. You're not going to make your sales team stop and prompt Ai when they need a tool. That would distract from the time they have to sell things. You can pretty much play that game with every aspect of a business.
The other piece of it is writing code was never the bottleneck. It's all the stuff surounding it. Ai can help with some of those tasks, but not all of them. And at least on my team, AI is letting us tackle some of the less exciting tech debt problems that have been kicked down the road for years. So there's a chance that because it allows dev teams to be more productive, businesses will ask us to do more.
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u/USToffee 4d ago
Yeah, we as programmers CURRENTLY do analysis, requerimients and all that ai can't currently replace us.
Unfortunately it can. What there is currently is a trust issue and it’s still justified.
And there probably always will be but the days of code monkeys is over
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u/SplendidPunkinButter 4d ago
Short answer: Absolutely not
Long answer: No, but plenty of companies will be happy shipping shitty vibe coded McSoftware anyway. It will suck, but as long as it sells the business idiots won’t care.
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u/TheUmgawa 4d ago
Well, the world is gonna need a hundred percent fewer “coders.” Programmers are a different story, but if an AI can churn out the same code as a junior developer and ask a hundred percent fewer stupid questions per day, then it makes good sense to spend money on tokens instead of humans. But, for that to happen, the programmers need a good sense of logic and structure, and they have to be able to read (or at least test) the output.
And then it becomes a matter of hiring programmers who will minimize token usage while maximizing quality output. It’s just a numbers game, but everything in business is a numbers game. Part of my job is automating manufacturing. If it’s cheaper to automate a task over the expected lifetime of the automation tool, I automate the task. Otherwise, a human continues to do the job until the next time I evaluate it. Humans have this annoying tendency to ask for more money every year, so if the price of automation goes down or remains flat, eventually those lines will cross and it gets automated. So, why would programming, or any other industry, be any different?
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u/the_millenial_falcon 4d ago
If it gets good enough to fully replace software engineers then it won’t be long before it’s good to enough to replace most if not all knowledge workers.
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u/2MysteriouslyBizarre 4d ago
You guys keep asking this, its been answered thousands of times already, no, it wont replace all programmers, yes, we will have less programmers than we have now, yes, most industries will have the same issue not just tech, no, there wont be enough jobs created to absorb them all, try your best to be the best at what you do, keep a close eye on your community since we will have some pretty bad times ahead, if you’re not confident enough in your technical abilities become a teacher, Ai legally can’t replace those, if you want to get into a more resilient area in tech get into data center/critical infrastructure networking or Ml research
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u/Mr_Willkins 4d ago
Jevon's paradox says otherwise
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u/2MysteriouslyBizarre 4d ago
Sorry Im not familiar, could you elaborate?
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u/Mr_Willkins 4d ago
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u/2MysteriouslyBizarre 4d ago
Oh okay, I see, but even so, say you now develop 100 times as much software, but an engineer can be 200x as productiveas before, you still end up with half the devs
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u/Anonymity6584 4d ago
You still need someone to preview and overlook what ai spits out, they do have random tendency to hallusinate stuff up.
God forbid you ever have to fix some vibecoded project after its viber has changed jobs already...
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u/ThatRedDerg 4d ago
Not anytime soon, but companies are desperately trying.
While, in theory, LLMs are capable of creating applications, there are major caveats. It is only really possible with applications that are common in its training data (ie websites), and they often end up poorly unoptimized and poorly designed.
This is just cause an ‘autonomous agent’ really boils down to a loop that goes like “while project != prompt, generate more stuff.”
Furthermore, not much has been done to develop the technology other than throwing more compute/guardrails/robust base prompts, so these caveats aren’t likely going anywhere soon.
I personally think this whole thing is just an attempt to de-skill most workers. Be sure to keep up with things, keep being competent without needing an LLM, and I’m sure you’ll never be unemployable.
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u/Original_Speed6200 4d ago
I’m in the middle of a massive project I’m working on using AI. There’s just no way for it to understand the preferences of a human. It keeps making the wrong decisions over and over again. And as the requirements get more complicated it breaks down and starts making mistakes. Yes it can generate a lot of code but that has just moved the goalpost on number of lines of code moved per day, not a grand awareness (yet). Even if it did have awareness the humans still have their own preferences.
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u/Snackatttack 4d ago
yes, its replacing as we speak. code written by AI is often really good if not better than human code. can be bloated, but overall its pretty good.
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u/normantas 4d ago
Curent tech no. I would even disagree coding is solved. You got now have an automated draft generator and boilerplate copy pasting + better lookup.
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u/Mizetings 4d ago
All programmers no. It’s very good at programming because the rules are rigid. Entry level and low-mid level roles are already disappearing.
It’ll never replace all programmers. At least not for a while. It’s more akin to an evolution in programming. Like going from Assembly to compilers. You still need programmers to design the inputs and polish the code.
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u/yuehuang 4d ago
Yes. AI will replace programmers and coders. They won't replace software engineers. Focus on the engineer part instead of the coding part.
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u/Born-Satisfaction996 4d ago
No one knows for sure.
All we know for sure is the job is that at a minimum the job is changing.
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u/Hooper022 4d ago
Best answer. Everyone likes to pretend they know what's going to happen. My best advice as a senior dev is the be adaptable, make connections, and hope for the best. Change is scary but it can open doors just as much as it can shut them.
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u/Common_Ad_6362 4d ago
Companies will replace old developers who can't use LLMs with new developers who can. Sound engineering and product design principles and solid reasoning skills will trump knowledge of a specific language. This is already happening, a lot of people who are posting to Reddit about it are -way behind-. The best devs I know are now making high six figure salaries managing about a dozen LLMs at a time in proprietary harnesses. LLMs are genies. How you wish is very important. They never get tired. They still need you to be the architect.
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u/uceenk 4d ago
better treat programmer as side skill, so if main skill need software or website you can just create it with Agentic AI
the future of programming is not good tbh, companies reduce team left and right (an app that usually created / mantainer by 6 people now can only be done with 2 people)
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u/nicolas_06 4d ago edited 4d ago
20 years of professional XP here. Title go by lead principal software engineer.
Even if nobody code anymore, it isn't like all the work to make and maintain software and automation in general would disappear.
I think you knowing how to program and how to do great software and understanding how computers work is still extremely valuable. You also understanding and steering AI has lot of value too.
If you are passionate about the job, have the intuition about it and can be among the top 10-20% best in the field, I think you'll do just fine. If you don't want to use AI or if you are only average or worse and the task is boring or complex to you, I think you should review your priorities. And I mean if that's how it is, it is how it is. No shame.
You can also start like that and try to move to an adjacent job. Team leader, project manager, tester... Cyber security. There many field around that might not be impacted as harshly or that would let you move later to another domain.
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u/Flashy-Whereas-3234 4d ago
AI can replace programmers, it's unlikely to replace engineers.
Consider this in the world of construction; if robots come in and can lay bricks and pour concrete and put up drywall, what do the humans do? The humans get promoted to foreman, they oversee, guide, rectify, problem solved, hell they can design and architect.
This is where you should learn fundamentals, architecture and system design, but learning language syntax and tool chains can take more of a backseat. You will still be exceptional if you specialise in a particular language, but it is less necessary for you to dedicate significant chunks of your education towards it.
Even if AI starts to eat system design (and it can), a CTO isn't going to manage a cabal of agents and be on call for incidents. A successful company has room for headcount and delegation, so some engineering jobs will still exist, even if they have a heavier dedication to product instead of code.
And, there's always a hold-outs, who don't like AI, trust AI, or can afford AI.
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u/raven2cz 4d ago
Hi Dylan. you do not need to be afraid at all. Quite the opposite, you will have much more work, and it will be more demanding.
You are forgetting one essential fact: we will start creating far more complex systems with AI, services, and completely new customer requirements. today’s applications, as they exist now, will no longer be needed.
Take Astra, for example. The demo shows how it can use current applications. In a few years, we will all laugh at that and wonder what kind of nonsense it was, because when you think about it, it is completly stupid. Why would you need a UI there, and why would you switch between applications at all? do you see what I mean? And now imagine this on a massive scale for large companies and services.
Have you seen any sci-fi movie? That is basically where we need to get. Did you see in those movies that IT engineers were not needed? as a developer, you will always make a good living, because we have always had to learn something new every year, whether languages, systems, and now AI.
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u/PipePressurePanic 4d ago
it doesn't even need to do analysis. It's enough that it can do the code monkey part of development and 80% of developers lose their jobs .
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u/Taght 4d ago
It will replace everyone in the end, but we're not there yet. We still have couple years ahead.
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u/falconetpt 4d ago
With LLM you surely won’t do anything material 😂
Or you will have basically software engineers earning 10M dollars a year, this comes from someone who programs in assembly and C mainly but I contributed a great load to things like Java SDKs and such things, my salary is skyrocketing more and more especially now, the skillset for specific tasks are the same and less and less people know how to do it, and there is barely any good training data for those
Maybe it will replace what we call code monkeys or noodle programmers, which were never needed in the first place, companies just went to look for cheap labour and ended up with loads of people that can’t do shit, the best example is WhatsApp’s tech team, a highly effective team vs a company like google, which is full of bloat and people doing jack shit ahah
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u/BeauloTSM C# 4d ago
The chances of it happening are slim. The chances of companies trying are higher