Coding won’t exist in 5 years? You might be right.

The talk about AI taking our programming jobs is everywhere. There are articles being written, social media going crazy, and comments on seemingly every one of my YouTube videos. And when I made my video about ChatGPT, I had two particular comments that stuck out to me. One was that someone wished I had included my opinion about AI in that video, and the other was asking if AI will make programmers obsolete in 5 years. This video is to do just that. And after learning, researching, and using many different AI tools over the last many months (a video about those tools coming soon), well let’s just say I have many thoughts on this topic. What AI can do for programmers right now. How it’s looking to progress in the near future. And will it make programmers obsolete in the next 5 years? Enjoy!!

The Sessions I Mentioned:

A portion of this video is sponsored by NVIDIA.

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📓 Learning Resources:

👨‍💻 My Coding Gear:

[xchoochoopainx]

software engineers got so obsessed with optimizing, we began to optimize ourselves out of the industry

[suregamming]

I am about to graduate with a CS degree and the thought of losing a career I haven't even started terrifies me

[neey]

It's funny how programmers managed to cause chaos on lot of careers, and now they're doing it to themselves

[PaidAMaluCachu]

I used to work in an accounting team producing invoices, tax schedules, policy documents (real fun shit). Overtime, I noticed that more and more software updates were coming in, making it easier to auto-generate these documents. We were a whole department of well over 20 people when I joined. By the time I left after just 2 years, there were just 3 "quality control" checkers. Personally, I never liked the job anyway and was glad to be moving on. But the worst part was there were people who had been doing that their whole life. Some had been at the company 30+ years. They didn't know anything else. My best advice to anyone worried about job security is make hay while the sun still shines and have a plan B.

[joesminis]

If AI is writing software better than humans, we have a much bigger problem than being out of a job.

[TheAwesomeness]

Currently halfway through my bachelor in software engineering. Decided to get back to school at 27 and pursue it. How did I get like the worst timing ever wtf

[MeisaCarrotFarm]

Just many months ago everyone told kids to learn coding and now today adults and CS students are being told to quit college and coding? WTF?

[sugar-lxjz]

Looks like the programmers get to know what it feels like to be artists right now

[cfm]

I'm literally in my first year of a CS degree and all I have ever wanted was to become a Software Engineer, gain tons of experience and within 10 years get a really well paid job. It actually sickens me that this is more than likely never going to happen now and I'm not going to lie, its seriously effecting my mental health.

[mintcar]

I would like to offer some solace to those new CS graduates who commented on this video about their fears. I had only 5 years in the print industry before all jobs dissapeared in that industry, but what I knew about typography and layout was not obsolete. Once I learned some coding I could transition to that field and utilize what I knew. Also, a lot of what it means to do a job well is universal. I'm not going to go into particulars, but basically being a good worker is a skill of it's own, and learning is as well. Whatever the future holds, I bet you will be well equipped to handle it.

[lerouxvermeulen]

I just started my programming career a year and a half ago after a very long time of not knowing what to do with my life. I finally found something that I feel like is worth doing, how ironic.

[Sriracha]

As a student who’s about to graduate college really soon with a CS degree. I’m terrified. I basically have about 2-3 years to save as much money as I can and save that money to get into another major 😭 nursing school here I come

[headlights-go-up]

As a new dev still looking for job #1, it's really worrying.

[hououinkyouma]

As a CS graduate of 1 year, my life has only recently started becoming stable with a moderate job and positive career prospects... except the advent of AI has shattered that image of stability for me. I can't predict how the following years will go, how the industry I've spent years studying for will change and morph, and when the value I've built up for myself as a software engineer will decrease or, quite possibly, become irrelevant.

I thought the toughest and most doubtful years of my life were behind me, but the coming years look much more difficult to struggle through than I could have predicted :(

[marlonscloud]

I'd just like to offer some words of encouragement, I have been a professional software developer for almost 10 years now, and currently use Chat GPT to assist with bugs, issues and writing skeleton code. I can tell you that it is very far from replacing a human developer. It gets a lot of things wrong and more importantly, it doesn't "connect the dots" like a human can. I'm what I consider a below average developer technically, yet I've almost 10x my salary over the past 10 years and have a great career. We aren't going anywhere, this is just another tool to help us do our jobs, if anything, this will offer developers more opportunity.

So if you're currently studying CS or similar, keep going. And if you want any further more personal advice, feel free to get in touch.

Cheers, good luck!

[AussieAmigan]

I think we've forgotten something major in all this. There's a huge portion of the IT market that exists just to put bums on seats. They actively endorse tech frameworks that require more programmers they can hire out. They will probably fight tooth and nail against this until more AI experts are required than the programmers it was set to erase.

[saricden]

This will be my 18th year developing software. I fully admit that the thought of a future where writing code is an obsolete practice makes me... If nothing else, sad. I personally have a blazing passion for learning the nuances of these technical languages and applying them to invent things that haven't been built before. I've heard many people mention that in the future, knowing how to prompt AI software will become a critical skill, and I believe that. Not really sure where I'm going with all this, but I guess I'm likely going to have to learn how to deal with my passion becoming obsolete.

[KiloSierra]

The joys of higher unemployment and lower wages await us all. I think the technology will make a few people very rich, and lot of people very poor. It's all very well painting a picture of progress, but I'd argue it isn't progress if everyone is on minimum wage and struggling to find a purpose in life. The only thing AI truly achieves is putting opportunity and wealth into the hands of an even smaller group of people. No other technology has ever existed which has the potential to replace so many working people in such a short space of time. Comparing a printing press to AI is like comparing a bullet to a nuclear bomb. We're charging head first into an economic melt down and a dystopia.

[Thekingslayer-igse]

After a lot of personal struggles I am about to join as a data engineer and this makes me feel depressed so much ! Just can’t imagine what life will be after all this mess

[jamesmussett]

I'm a full time senior dev and Chat GPT is not only assisting me in my current role, but it is also allowing me to rapidly develop side projects that I didn't dream of working on a couple of months ago let alone last year. Integrating it as part of a codebase or a workflow is the last missing piece before everything clicks in to place.
Most of my time is now is already spent ensuring that ChatGPT's code and suggestions are correct instead of actually writing code in the first place.