In this world of AI, no-one can miss the discussions about “vibe coding”. What that means is a the use of AI to write code to develop a product quickly, and the author doesn’t even need to know how to write code. This opens up so many possibilities, as long as the code has a high quality.
I won’t dig deeply into the quality of the code produced by AI today, but for now I wouldn’t trust code written by AI to be run in production without rigorous code review and testing. However, if we assume that AI in the future would be of a quality high enough to be run, what would the impact be on Developers? I would argue that this is not a new problem, but a new version of an old problem.
In the early days of programming, developers had to write complex assembly to tell the computer what to do. Then came the compilers and high level languages! This new tech would allow new users with less understanding of computers to develop programs! Doesn’t that sound familiar? However, this did not limit the need for developers. It limited the need for assembly developers, but the need for modern developers skyrocketed.
My prediction is that the same will happen now. The need for traditional developers will fall, but instead we will need a new breed of developers. Developers that know how to prompt AI to create software according to the requirements of the business. Even though a developer will be more efficient the need for software will increase even more, meaning that there will be need for even more developers.
Before we get to this future we need to solve some issues at hand. Using AI for coding introduces new risks, but that we’ll have to save for another time.