The Great Programmer Purge: How AI Is Taking Over the Tech Workforce
How AI is Redefining the Role of Programmers in the Tech Industry
I’m a senior software engineer loving clean code, and declarative designs. S.O.L.I.D. and agile methodologies fan.
TL;DR: AI-generated code outperforms lazy programmers. Software jobs are declining, but centaurs will survive.
Today, a friend of mine shared his frustration about being asked to fill out a registration form requiring a username and password.
The system was poorly designed and demanded a secure password without telling him what the issue was.
This is a clear example of terrible UX and a lazy programmer unaware of writing error messages with empathy.
I told my friend this is unacceptable in today’s world since all AIs can easily solve such problems.
I took my phone and said, L.M.P.T.F.Y (Let Me Prompt That For You), the modern equivalent to LMGTFY.
I quickly wrote a prompt:
Give me the code for a secure password validation site with helpful error messages when the user enters a weak password.
The A.I. successfully provided a working page with this code:
You can also try it yourself:
The Bad News
The AI-generated solution with helpful error messages is bad news for lazy programmers.
Software development jobs are already declining, and this trend is expected to continue:
This is something many people have been forecasting.
I wrote an article five years ago during the last AI Winter predicting this will happen.
As the great Niels Bohr once said:
Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
Now, it’s clear: lazy programmers are doomed!
The Good News
What can we do as software engineers besides writing crapy code?
Give Up
Explore Other Careers
Soon, there will be a shortage of handy people such as electricians, plumbers, and painters.
We can improve ourselves by becoming centaurs.
A.I. won't take your job. A developer mastering AI tools will.
I write biweekly articles about clean code, refactoring, and programming.
In these articles, you can compare the output of many AIs with and without guidance.
For example, the above code has several problems unnoticed by AIs:
Humans remain invaluable when they know how to harness AI effectively.
Here's a video benchmarking some tools:
Conclusion
Hopefully, my friend will soon complete the password form- or better yet developers will deprecate all passwords.
Also Hopefully, I hope you’ll write solutions like these and get paid as a "Centaur"—a developer who masters AI tools to enhance their craft.
