Predictions

I am increasingly distressed by the race to replace human developers, particularly the more junior ones, with AI assistants. … Companies are jumping on AI as a way of removing those messy (and expensive) humans from the process of developing software.

I think the best observation is that “people don’t know what they want”. If AI Coding is the proverbial horse, then everyone wants a faster horse; no one will ask for the car. Most research I find and post here indicates a 10-20% overall productivity improvement, but really as Dave points out that efficiency will be filled with more ambitious work.

When I got stuck with a problem, I had two options: PRINT commands and a lot of dedication, or back to the library. Debugging at that time meant: running, hitting an error, searching, adjusting, and running again with fingers crossed. But in my view, this is just the next step in a long evolution of developer tools.

Eclipse, Firebase, and Stack Overflow haven’t replaced developers, and AI won’t make us obsolete either. Instead, it creates some space for what really matters in software development: creativity, innovation, understanding what the customer wants, and solving complex problems. You could even say that productivity doesn’t increase, but expectations do. … AI functioned as a private tutor who could communicate exactly at my level.

SA: I mean, my basic assumption is that each software engineer will just do much, much more for a while. And then at some point, yeah, maybe we do need less software engineers.

Lots of ink spilled on the nature of software engineering. I find it hard to believe that we’ll need fewer engineers… but flaged this as a ‘prediction’ so I can check back later.

_{Quote Citation: Ben Thompson, “An Interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman About Building a Consumer Tech Company”, March 20, 2025, https://stratechery.com/2025/an-interview-with-openai-ceo-sam-altman-about-building-a-consumer-tech-company/}