There is a lot of hype, noise, love and opinion about the use of artificial intelligence (in all its different forms) in software development. Of course, similar disturbances happen in other markets and academic fields at the same time, but I’m not qualified enough to participate in discussions there.
I feel confident enough to share my impressions on our current usage patterns of AI here. You probably recognize the amount of limitations I put into my statement. The usage patterns evolve quick and still quite radical. I’m no “AI native”, so all I say are just impressions from a certain distance. But I felt confident enough in software engineering for at least 25 years to teach it to the next generations of developers. So I know where we were when it all started.
My impressions will be described in detail in five blog posts, each discussing one specific topic. This is the starting post that introduces the headlines of the following articles, but won’t detail them. If you want to react and comment on a topic, please attach it to the matching blog post so we can keep the discussion on point. I invite you to think along, starting with the headline statements. My thoughts are worthless without your thoughts enriching them with your knowledge and experience.
Let’s have a look at the five impressions:
- Computing gets fuzzy again. The components of software systems were never sharply defined, but with AI they tend to act like analog components, having bad days and noisy episodes and all.
- Source code gets obscure again. As soon as the AI surpasses the imitation stage of human-written code, we won’t be able to read the generated source code anymore – if the AI bothers to generate source code at all and doesn’t leap to machine code directly.
- Software developers don’t create software anymore, they manage and lead software creators. This was the fate of the “senior developer promoted to middle management” all the time, but at least it was humans to lead and manage and not a people-pleasing machine.
- We delegate the scalable and fun part of our work to AI. The infamous “10X developer” is now a “1000X AI developer”, but the tedious rest of the work (that exists and makes all the long-term difference) is still up to humans.
- The means of production are centralized again. Software development was a profession with incredibly low entry bar (a notebook and a coffee). The actual difference was the skill of the human that did the (mostly intellectual) work. If we all use the same AI (created and provided by infrastructure no single person could just copy), the skill difference will be much smaller and we tend to be interchangeable “workers”.
I don’t expect you to understand my thoughts by just two sentences alone, so stay tuned for the elaborate explanation in the topic-based blog posts of this series.
Topic 1 and 2 focus on technical aspects of software development. Topics 3 and 4 have the remaining human developer in mind, gauging her or his well-being and the skills needed to master a normal workday. Topic 5 broadens the view to economic and even political implications of the changes.
Topic 5 is where I might be wrong the most, because I lack the experience of living through severe changes on the scale that my anticipated changes operate on. I’m not a historian, so I’ll talk about things I only have wikipedia-level knowledge about. I hope that the thoughts are still useful and somebody can provide more content on the topic.
The topic-based blog entries are published in the next weeks or months. I will link them in the list above as soon as they are online. I really appreciate your thoughts, in the form of your own blog entry or a comment.
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