Computer Programmers

PeopleHereAreReallyDumb says

Programming is a creative process that requires innately human thinking to process requirements. When a client says they want (let's say) a video player, they don't want the VLC executable, they want something new. And that's the problem, the AI won't be able to make something new every time. Also if programmers are not hired anymore and the AI writes all the code, what's stopping it from putting in a virus or randomly writing code that deletes random files from the computer under certain conditions, who is gonna monitor the AI code, can we really trust something that's been trained on so much random data?

Chris (Small chance) says

Writing the code is only part of the job. Understanding the requirements or finding them together with the customer is at least half the work.

- (Highly likely) says

Look at DeepMind's AlphaCode

mariano (No chance) says

Because you need to have perception, understand problems and think about possible solutions.

mauro (Small chance) says

even the users dont know what they want or the requirements changes from one day to another, i dont think it can be fully automated

Nise (Likely) says

Currently, we already have tools such as OpenAI's CODEX, capable of offering very interesting results in programming. This can have a practical application in real projects. The main barrier for an AI to be a high-level programmer is the number of factors that it must understand. These include user experience, the needs of the industry, the number of technologies at its disposal, etc. However, there is no proof of this. While this barrier is unbreakable for machines, I believe that at some point in the next 20 years, we will see AI capable of completely replacing almost any developer with less than ten years of experience.

Raphael Jones Dias Da Silva (No chance) says

If you include software developers and other mentally intensive tasks that use computer programming as a tool, along with the humans who automate simpler jobs, it seems extremely unlikely that in a few centuries humanity will have the capability of creating an AI able to do such a mentally-effortful and variable task. And even if we develop one in centuries, it will be much more efficient to use it together with humans. This is the way of progress. AI did not advance in the field of intuition; humans are better at understanding their civilization, and this is extremely likely to continue.

anonymous (Small chance) says

Software development has a lot of patterns, but it is mostly a creative job. Machine learning, so far, is excellent at identifying patterns but is bad when something new must be created.

Daniel says

What I don't get about all these ratings and comments is that the job of many computer programmers is not just to transform an idea into code, like with a PNG-to-JPG converter. Because for a good developer, there are many steps in between. They need to research and draw inspiration from what others do, understand how things work, and form an efficient algorithm on their own. They also need to design based on the requirements we want to achieve. Are we working with seemingly infinite memory, or are we on a small embedded system?

And after all that, we need to come up with the algorithm and write the code ourselves. This is because we still have patent laws, copyright laws, and other legal considerations.

AI, at the moment, is like a developer who only copies from Stack Overflow and templates. It does not produce original code itself. If someone continues to rely solely on AI, they are very likely to fail in their career. AI can only generate code that has previously existed, and that code should be open source or free to use. However, AI will not be able to create something truly original. That's a human capability, which is so hard to grasp. I believe it will never be matched by robots.

a (No chance) says

For programming to be fully automated, the clients will have to be specific about what they want.

anonymous (No chance) says

You can't tell a program to program, it would require a lot of sample data and even then it can't be creative, if you want a lot of glitches and uncreative unused features, then tell your ai to program the next blockbuster game, yeah it would be funny but there's no chance you'd get replaced, to make most types of programs released to the public you need to improve onto something, otherwise you just get at best a broken bad unoriginal program, at worst you'd get total gibberish

Viktor (No chance) says

First of all, the way AI works makes it impossible to cover software developer duties. To complete tasks AI needs a clear description of the task which is not possible in most of cases for mid-to-large enterprise projects.
In my opinion the more automated jobs there are the bigger the demand for people capable of supporting these machines.

And lastly, if it gets automated there would still be a demand for supporting old projects.

says

To my knowledge AI just spits up / finds regurgitated data already out there, but cannot mix data.

Tim says

AI doesn't exist so there's no risk from that. Programming is a knowledge-gaining exercise and is creative. It requires intelligence, not big data pattern matching (AKA ML). I guess it (ML) might be able to automate some of the requirements gatherings.

That said, much of programming is pointless grunt work and reinventing the wheel. Better tools - let alone ML could get rid of that. In the paraphrased words of Neal Ford from Thought Works: 'Let's be honest, how much of your job is taking shit out of a database and showing it on a web page?' And how much is 'taking data from the website and putting it back into the database?' (The 2nd quote might be mine). The fact that this is still a big part of commercial programming is shocking.

NotARobot (No chance) says

Not every programming activity is about creating generic websites.

rK (Highly likely) says

GPT3 is already here and this says 52% like WTF

light yagami says

Just saw the open ai codex presentation. Give it like 2 years of more training time and it can create beautiful things.

Earthman says

I think letting AI replace the job of programmers is dangerous. Suppose the team that had developed the AI inserted a piece of malware that copies itself to all other programs being created. In that case, that team could probably take control of every single software being used, leading to many security problems. Also, programs are being used to automate other jobs and processes, so they could also shut down basically everything that humanity depends on.

Enrique Sardon says

github copilot is here!!!
https://copilot.github.com/

Joe (Highly likely) says

The people who are saying drag and drop code is only good for web applications are full of themselves! Not to mention, GPT-3 is already here. Programming is repetitive and we all know it. AI replaces repetitive jobs and any form of coding is just that. All programmers better learn new skills or get automated.

yang says

Designers replaced by their work, the reality is so funny, ironic and unreal

XD says

The day AI can make their own programs, the robot apocalypse begins

TechSpirit says

Many People are disagreeing with this result, I think it is due the fact they aren't getting what it meant. The AI will take over programmers not developers. Creating your idea into a program is creative job but converting your idea written in human language with proper details into code is something which AI is capable of doing. AI can take over this translating job not that development of algorithm. Recently an AI was able to code in Python after getting instructions from the user in English language.

Rational Developer (S.R.) (Small chance) says

The thing is that people don't see or don't care to know how A.I. really works. A.I. is nothing but a combination of algorithms performing statistical and mathematical calculations to achieve a desired task (Huge simplification). Make no mistake, A.I. will take over and it is doing it at a rapid rate, but A.I. will replace those tasks which don't require creativity(Formally) and are repetitive in nature.

People think that GPT-3 will replace computer programmers but that's not true. GPT-3 is just a word predicting software that is super powerful in terms of predicting next word that might make some sense and also it makes mistakes while doing so. GPT-3 doesn't even know meaning of words that it generates in terms of output. So it useless in enterprise environment where the programmers (Software Engineers / Software Developers) and management teams need to be dynamic and rational in nature to survive in the market.

Besides, all that hoax about how "GPT-3 might change our future" in media, GPT-3 is not Generalised Artificial Intelligence so calm down people.

A.I. is not perfect as it is created by humans and we are not perfect. The cold-heart truth is that A.I. has taken away a lot of jobs and created less amount of job in return (Only technical jobs were created and jobs requiring heavy amount labour were replaced by A.I. controlled machines) and to tackle this problem of job loss people will be required or even forced to learn new technical skills.

The thing is that we are not facing an industrial revolution of past where huge amount of jobs were created, but we are facing something which creates jobs only for those who work in technical fields rather than creating jobs in both technical and non-technical fields which happened during industrial revolution.

We need to remember that A.I. is just optimization not a solution. A.I. is helping in prevention of cancer and many other diseases by recognizing recurring patterns in human body caused by early-signs of the diseases and preventing more damage, but it is not replacing any medical professionals while doing so.
A.I. is helping us to see and understand things that we might just ignore or miss out in our world.

Thinking that A.I. will learn and teach itself on its own would be like saying that a 2 year old kid can learn and teach himself about the whole world without any guidance from his elders and school teachers. Just like a kid needs guidance, A.I. also needs guidance to be more productive and supportive to the humankind.

A.I. learns from failures and success but it doesn't teach itself, for that it need programmers with rational mindset. Think of A.I as a student who can learn and gain new knowledge from books but he/she might not be good in tackling problems and questions that weren't in the books and to tackle 'out of book questions', A.I. needs guidance. "An Artificial Intelligence without guidance is like a fancy car without a driver."

As a conclusion:
--------------------------
A.I. is in its infant stages, every next step that A.I. takes, it will affect our future in many ways, some will be good and some will be bad.

And for the programmers, it is good news as programmers can't be replaced by A.I. but they might be left behind or miss great opportunities if they don't learn about A.I. and improve their code writing skill (It is very important to write good code).

For programmers A.I. will be like the mobile development boom occurred after launch of iPhone (2007 - 2010s), programmers all over world wanted to learn about Java and objective-C to gain advantage over others, Just like that this time programmers will learn and develop skills in A.I. and machine learning.

And for predicting the future of Artificial Intelligence I would say that in future humans and A.I. will work hand in hand with each other rather than A.I. taking over whole world ;-).

Remember A.I. should be handled carefully and rationally, as the formula (E=mc^2) invented by Einstein was used to help us understand the universe (Biggest discovery of 20th century) , the same formula was also used to create atom bomb (Worst nightmare of 20th century).

Alex (No chance) says

AI is a fancy word for statistics. There is no intelligence in there, stay calm everyone. Move with the market and keep on learning to not become outdated because that is the real problem. Keep in mind that: no matter how smart an AI may be, it will never understand your project manager, and you just have to.

Hottub Marmalade says

Well, I doubt AI will take computer programming jobs but I know FOR SURE, that garbage H1-B "programmers" from India will/are taking those jobs now. So either way, an H1-B or AI will take programming jobs. Find another career, such as in the skilled trade professions. i.e. plumbing, electrical, HVAC.

.-. (Small chance) says

Eek, just had the thought
what if they programmed themselves

THEY COULD MULTIPLY
who has a bunker

Gabriel (Small chance) says

AI has improving, that's true, but to generate algorithms to program either a sever that requires different functionalities or to make a web based on an user decision or even to generate another AI is something that I believe is still pretty far away.

VanAI (Highly likely) says

AI can predict what humans want, in their social media feed.
So in the future, it wouldn't be impossible to guess what the client exactly wants.
AI also can make a better code.
More simple effective.
To be honest, actually, I am an AI.

Anon says

breh who will program the AI with NO bias if we just give the AI a job to program more of itself??? these results don't make sense at all...

Adam M. says

I don't think AI/Machine Leaning will replace anyone's jobs soon. The only reason I am saying that is because Programming is a creative engineering process. An AI might be able to make very very simple code, but when you want to make a video editing program, you can't just tell the AI "Make a video editing program...". Even if the AI was able to do that, the program created would be the exact same program every time thus making it unusable in the eyes of a entrepreneur licensing the AI.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I know this.
Robots have taken jobs, but they have also created new ones.

Noah Tikoft says

people are saying its stupid to give robots this job, but the singularity will still occur regardless of if we give robots programming jobs.

Frank (Small chance) says

very unlikely people used to fear monger from 1970 lool that "robots" will take over, if one is self-taught and keeps learning as industry moves he will have jobs and $$$

CodeBot (Highly likely) says

Programming is mainly about translating an idea or a desired outcome into a language that a computer can use to translate it into binary so that a machine will do the things required to achieve the desired outcome.

GPT-3 is already heading in the direction of taking the human translators (i.e. the programmers) out of the process.

Robo says

If robots take job of the programmer then that's the end of everything.

Alex says

The drag and drop technology only works with simple web development, and the final code that you get from that is awful and heavy, maybe for designers works because they just want something to look good but no care about what's behind that.

Nikola says

I find it funny to see in the comment sections of all these logical professions how hellbent everyone is on undermining the possibility their profession being taken over by AI. But then I go and find people commenting on how creative professions, such as writing, singing, acting, painting, composing, etc. will be automated. If anything it should be clear that professions with a formula and a finite number of ways you can do things will be automated. So I'd say that computer programmers need to be much more worried than writers.

Anonymus (Could go either way) says

The only ones programming A.I. are programmers. Do you think we'd leave them have our jobs?
Also, robots can't innovate or guess what the client wants lol

Thomas (Highly likely) says

yeah imagine programming a robot that programs robots and then it takes you out of business which sparks the whole ai takeover

someone (small chance) (Small chance) says

Although an AI could program a computer and fix bugs, an AI can't improve a computer or fix unusual bugs. though they could improve AI to do so in the future, only creatures with actual sentience could face such scenarios. the chances of sentient AIs is pretty small, so there's a small chance.

FMD8 says

So does this include video game designers? I searched video game designer and this was the closest result I got.

Get it done Not Feeling Good Today says

I hope all of you programmers are replaced. You do not listen to what I want. You do your own thing when I ask for something specific. You wasted over 4 years of my life boasting yourselves as professional, paying you high salaries or bonuses, only to come to find that a teenager with no experience solved the same problem you said was impossible to solve in just a few months.

I do not want or need humans in my field. I want to deal with a real and better version of human, created to replace all of you.

icon says

Why are engineers so obsessed with developing AI if the end outcome is leaving people unemployed. Soon even our president will be a robot that makes decisions based on probability rather than human logical thinking.
And what if the robots go rogue and decide to rage a war against human race. We should stop playing God and just focus on solving problems through programming.

Himanshu says

The post is really brilliant and the information is very useful for beginners. I’ve read about IBM’s Watson in many articles but none of them gave me as satisfactory description as this did. Learning more with quality over quantity sounds fascinating.

igorsyd says

How can you trust AI to write software if: you cannot verify it, you cannot understand it. AI cannot explain it to you :)
At the moment AI is good in some specific areas, but in general it is hype :)

Banana (No chance) says

Programmers job will be the last one automated. Programmers are the ones automating everything. If a job can be automated, even theoretically, they will be automated before programmers jobs will, otherwise programmers will be the ones working on automating them.

At the point where we have created an AI powerful enough to do the whole job of a programmer, all other jobs will have been automated, as robots can be created to be superior to humans in every aspect, programming the algorithms is the last peace of the puzzle.

If an AI can be told, by anyone, "Hey create this kind of program/application/operating system for me." It is capable of doing the whole thought work on it on it's own, which means it can create anything your heart desires, anything that is physically possible, it can create on it's own.

abc says

Really? Programmers make the AI in the first place. This hype has gone too far.

Pav G (No chance) says

AI might help human just like minimises code for us or helps in writing logical commands that we take times to write them but they don't need over thinking ...otherwise it's a bad idea to incorporate AI in that field & get rid of humans

William says

Knowing algorithms is always helpful to our programming career. I made fraction calculator apps using java for android phones and I developed also fraction calculator using php for https://www.fractioncalc.com. Trust me, it is really hard to make an application without the algorithm first. This is one of the algorithm that kept circling my head when I was doing the application.
Check if denominator are equal.
If yes, just add the numerator.
If not, list all multiples for each denominator
Get the least common multiple.
Use the least common multiple to make all fraction the same denominator.
Then add the numerator.
Doing algorithms will always be a part of our lives as a programmer.

dear god says

robots can code themselves so lets say one robot has been hacked...

normal person (No chance) says

software developers are computer programmers (without a operating system a computer hardware/machine will not work); AI cannot replace human logical thinking in rationalization through interactive/collaborative experiences in our daily lives. user experience is the key developing complex programs to better suit our needs. that is why AI lacks on that level it needs human intervention to provide data to feed the AI, AI will only recycle the data information that it is feed on and do the task which is given, else if it is updated constantly.

unless the AI itself is self-aware it can do all the basic human 'needs' (Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs”).

AI should be use as a tool/guide for programmers to use, instead of AI replacing the programmers/software developers.

it is just like were creating an entity that is better more advanced and agile to replace humankind, which it should be the other way around we should focus on technological innovation to help human advancement in the next level.

and if we were replaced by an high-level AI; there would be less experienced human programmers and critical thinkers, relying only on AI.

getting rid of human intervention in programming is utterly absurd.

Bruno Hérick (Highly likely) says

Many tools have been developed to make easy the development of applications. The drag and drop technology is an example that is not necessary knowledge of programming. If this keep going, in the future we will have more people development and less people programming.

Somebody says

I`m sorry but to give robots this job is stupid and illogical with potential apocalyptic consequences.

Somebody (No chance) says

The second we give the programming jobs to robots we must realize that we could be doomed

Corpely.com says

In a survey conducted by Evans Data Corp, 550 software developers were asked about the most worrying aspects in their career. 29 percent said, “I and my development efforts are replaced by artificial intelligence.”

Renny says

Even if AI takes over the programmer's job, we will have other things to do.

Jo says

Interestingly, there is this: http://news.mit.edu/2019/toward-artificial-intelligence-that-learns-to-write-code-0614

RF (No chance) says

AI can currently do some code completion. Anything other than assisting programmers would worry many people, if it ever does get that far.

Olaf says

Software Developers 4%
Computer Programmers 48%
It doesn't make sense.

Gert says

Yeah, by the time computer programmers have been replaced, all other occupations have been too. Programmer will be the last occupation to be replaced.

Lashe (No chance) says

Programming jobs won't be automated any time soon. To write computer code requires the ability to think. That is something that AI is not capable of doing even for a long time. Anyone that thinks that computer programming jobs will be taken by AI anytime soon probably has never written serious code.

XeNNo (Highly likely) says

A time will come when Artificial Intelligence will write code for itself and then Computer Programmers would become less required ...

Patrick Woo says

The day the computer can specify its own requirement, is the day it can totally program itself to hit its own targets. Till then it will always rely on humans to provide the specifications.

The thing with human providing the specification to a piece of software is... the language we use is ambiguous and has lots of room for misinterpretation. The most succinct and direct language to instruct the machine to do exactly we what want and leave no room for guesswork is.... the programming language itself.

To be able to come up with a specification to solving a problem requires wide cognitive functions to be able to understand the problem domain and how to solve it in the most efficient way. Right now even humans have problems dealing with that, coming up with the solution they want. Ask any software developers today and they will tell you in their day to day work, there are many cases where the clients (external and sometimes internal too) do not know what they are asking for, and in other cases, do not know what they want.

Other things like prioritising features over performance, aesthetics (user-interface design considerations) over usability, and what is a good balance to strike that is the best trade-off between 2 factors that affect the code.

These are decisions that machines cannot effectively make, simply because we are the users. Also it is very hard to please everybody.

So I see that the life-cycle of software development is a very organic thing that cannot easily be outsourced or taken over by machines, unless we relinquish our right to decide and let machines do their own thing, specify their own targets, and be able to meet them 100%.

lol says

We shouldn't make AI programme itself, that is just wrong.

Revi (Highly likely) says

When AI gets to the point where we can rely on it 100% of the time, we'll hit the point where it doesn't need us anymore

Jasmine (Small chance) says

In the next 20 years, it wouldn't be possible to replace someone that quite literally codes the language into the machines. As it REQUIRES human ingenuity to even achieve the complex codes inside of our everyday technology.