This post is sure to make me wildly unpopular in some circles… that’s ok, I’m saying what I think and I’m not too concerned about being popular.
The collective angst of the software development profession over AI software development is cringe worthy. The cringe exists in two dimensions, elitism and OUTRAGE that the disruption has come for ME!!!
All quotes have had the author redacted because I’m not here to publicly shame individuals.
Elitism
Software engineers (real ones) have been watching amateurs hack out badly designed systems for years. They’ve made a career out of slowly unpicking the mess created by those amateurs. AI coding agents are not a new problem. They’re just the old problem, automated. In the right hands they can be guided to produce a well constructed system that is maintainable and reliable.
Notice the work the parenthetical is doing here “real ones”… jeez… and let’s compare them to the “amateurs”…
Gross.
The othering, the quiet judgement, the disdain. I’m not sure how this is relevant to anything - other than creating a feeling of superiority and empowering an in group to dismiss everyone else as less than… as somehow unworthy.
It is beneath you. Just stop.
The disruption has come for me…
The arguments are so disrespectful to my craft and to all the people that have done the actual work. We made these fuckers rich and they repay us with layoffs and, “lol maybe go into a trade you lazy bum.” I can only hope that when this shit crashes and burns, all the companies end up paying an even larger premium for talented people to fix their AI generated “software.”
Yeah, where were you when word processing software destroyed all those typewriter jobs? All those administrative and clerical roles - gone.
What about the jobs lost - automated away - in Retail and the Service Sector? Point of sale solutions, self-checkout, inventory management, warehouse management… all software solutions that displaced thousands of jobs.
What about Banking and Finance - digital banking, online accounting software (go find a bookkeeper)?
What about Travel and Hospitality - travel agents - gone, online booking, cheap flight, hotel and vacation finders have displaced thousands of jobs.
We can’t be fine with software eating the world and automating all the things when it is us creating software and automating (getting the benefits) and then lose our collective minds when the software and “automation” comes for us.
Here’s the thing, I’ve spent 35 years working in the software industry, I’m a computer scientist / electrical engineer and I can’t even estimate how many lines of code I’ve written… and I’m DEEPLY troubled by the likely (potential?) displacement of white collar workers including software developers/engineers.
But I can not - in good conscience - suggest that software that disrupts what I do is any different than the software I’ve built that disrupted what other people do.
Nor can I suggest that my specialty should be excepted from disruption - just because it is my specialty.
Neither should you.
Maybe a better way forward…
There are real social and ethical implications of the impact of AI. We’ve seen the privatization of the gains and the socialization of the losses (impacts) enough times. We shouldn’t ignore the reality that we’ve structured the benefits and costs of these types of disruptions, and the expectations of those leading the disruption, in massively problematic ways.
I still expect, although I don’t know exactly what, that over a long period of time—this is not something for next year or the year after—a change to the social contract will be required, given how powerful we expect this technology to become. I’m not a believer that there will be no jobs; I think we always find new things to do. However, I do think the structure of society itself will be subject to some degree of debate and reconfiguration. (emphasis mine) – Sam Altman - Source
Thanks Sam - changes to the social contract and societal “reconfigurations” are expensive; who’s paying for that?
Maybe it is time we had a real conversation about where the benefits accrue - and where the cost burdens are carried in these waves of disruption…