Ask HN: What is your plan if AI ends coding as a profession in 2-3 years?

Think in terms of spreadsheets. In the past, it took someone, a very specialized person, to do a full breakdown of a company's finances. Now, a relative math novice can do the same thing in a fraction of the time. Now they don't have to spend time solving 1+3. Now they can solve other more complex problems.

I'm one that believes that coding will change but it won't go away any time soon.

For Amazon Web Services.

> What is your plan

Move off of AWS.

Currently “AI” can do maybe 2% of what a reasonably skilled programmer can do. I doubt the horizon sits just a few years away.

I’d like to give you a real answer, but I can’t take the claims and hype seriously. I have the same plan for the AI coding apocalypse as I have for a giant asteroid strike or the rapture: no plan. If it actually happens I will adapt, until then it doesn’t warrant worrying about. I have survived a few supposedly existential threats to my programming career over the last several decades, this one looks even less likely to come true.

Programming is defined as the art of creating/writing instructions for computers to perform. If you're aware, then you will realize that for AI to do anything, it must be instructed/prompted it to do so first. In other words, telling an AI to do something, is essentially programming, and that there is no world where AI will magically do something unless someone instructed it to do so.

That said, what AI has basically done, is made it possible to instruct computers using the syntax of our native language, instead of a more primitive syntax. This is immensely helpful, however... realize that the syntax of our native language is also problematic in ways, particularly in its preciseness (if you don't understand this, just look at the legal field, and why legal jargon is even a thing). And so, you'll eventually realize that it can sometimes be difficult to get a computer/AI to do exactly what you want it to do, no matter the syntax you decide to use.

All said, AI has made it easier than ever to program, but it doesn't remove having to do at least some sort of work of formulating instructions. That reality will always remain, and so long as there remains some demand for that work to be done, the profession will continue to exist.

I mean either way I'll be spending a lot of time indoors risking my life with a bunch of guys around

I don't think AI will be able to do that, at least not what we are calling AI right now. I mean, for fucks sake, humans are still doing it and we can't even figure out how to use the exponential increase in compute to make computing faster, we still can't figure out how to build foundations such that a program will still run as is in 20 years. Something finished still to this day needs maintenance. I doubt an LLM is going to improve the state of software, so there's still a ton of work we need to do.

I don't. But even if it would, there's enough in the bank account to get through a (although maybe not each and every) re-skilling.

I see shortages of qualified workers left and right, but I think I would seek a trade where you could reasonably become self-employed without too much capital investment. Maybe carpenter/joiner.

The fields of medical assitance (nursing, physician assistance, operating theater assitance, or paramedic) would also be something I could see myself in, but there you are basically always an employee under bad conditions. Or maybe a trade in that direction like prosthetist/orthotist, but I don't know enough about the job market there.

Also teaching would be something I would consider, but I'm not sure if I could sustain the necessary studies financially (as this is rather regulated in my country, it would depend on how much of my bachelor's degree would be transferable)

That is kind of scary to think about because most of the web apps will be written by bots, and probably really shitty. Web apps have always been a race to the bottom but now it will be a sprint. The upside though, is that those of us capable of writing web apps without boilerplate bullshit might once again be employable. I guess it just depends on whether businesses are willing to pay for applications up front or would rather buy commodities and pay down the road on maintenance, fees, fines, lawsuits, and such.

In the mean time my back up plans are as follows:

1. Retain my current job writing transmission/data APIs for large enterprises.

2. Military. I can at any time switch my part time job to a full time job.

3. Analytics. AI might at some point take half of analytics but the second half will just become an echo chamber if taken by bots.

I suppose if an AI will do all the work, I will probably be the one who uses the AI. Sure as hell the business people are not going to be the ones leveraging AI to build stuff.

I'm here writing this because your premise is wrong. Greenfield programming is a lot easier with AI, if you're willing to ride herd on it, and correct the errors. The profession of programming has little to do with actually generating code, and far, far more to do with the overall structure, and coping with all of the geometrically growing number of corner cases.

Imagining the corner cases, and coming up with ways to cover them, a priori, is what programmers actually get paid for. If AI gets to that point, nothing except actual physical labor is safe.

Someone has to ride herd on the AI if it is to be useful. You can be that someone.

https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/openai-japan...

Was going to school for a bit but ran out of money, so it's back to the working class for me. As a 40 year old, I don't think I have a future in tech, or anywhere really lol.

To answer the question, though: I'm 62. If that happens, I just retire. That doesn't help everyone else, though...

This seems to be of great concern to you, but let me ask you this: How prepared for civil war are you? Or the zombie apocalypse? Do you have a bunker and a bug-out bag ready to go? If AI gets that good at programming, it'll be as good in other industries, and there's gonna be some upheaval if it gets to that point suddenly, in a bad way. Nevermind coding, what happens when all jobs can be done by robots? If you're worried about having a backup plan for coding if a hypothetical AI programmer job apocalypse comes, what's your backup plan for civilization if an all job apocalypse comes?

Which is really to say: Keep calm and carry on. Your anxiety isn't going to make the problem any better. Be prepared, certainly, but don't worry yourself into a curled up mess in a fetal position in the corner.

Automate everything and what you will get is a massive riot.

But accounting is still a thing, it only lost that stupid “sum up a column” part. If you’re not only a coder, you’ll be fine. If all you can do is calling apis and recalling algorithms, you’re screwed.

AI will eventually try to replace everything in 20 years, including Matt Ceo. Make sure to stay an engineer cause at that point people who can shoot will realize people who own AI can not, but people who can shoot need engineers to run the thing.

Maybe in the giant software houses, sure, generating code around constrained, prescribed requirements prepared by moneyed teams incentivized to feed the machine dense, specific, meticulously-prepared requirements is/will be a thing, but I have such a hard time envisioning a world where a guy who starts a regional brewery and a couple restaurants, who has ever-shifting day-to-day challenges with personnel + product segmentation, who has immediate, unexpected business requirements (not pure TECH requirements, mind you), who needs somebody they can trust to offer technical insight and guidance without wasting their time with how the sausage is made, I just struggle to imagine that that dude will fire his 'guy' and then just sit down and magically craft a perfect prompt or unleash an all-knowing AGI who can navigate the irrational nuances of humans who have money and are desperate to spend.

As a technologist, I'm literally boiling over with thoughts about AI / AGI, how to achieve it, etc. That said, as a human, I would be a fool to ignore the fact that PEOPLE can't even understand each other's intent or message with any accuracy. Get a guy from the Everglades and a guy from Mauritania together and you better believe there will be misunderstandings. Now imagine any non-SV non-elite-American and an LLM...

There's just no way that it'll do what you want unless you can ask it to do EXACTLY what you want, in the parlance of the predominant culture / colloquialisms that the model was trained on.

Who knows with AGI, but it doesn't exist, so I guess we'll cross that bridge when it appears. In the meantime, I promise you, all anybody wants is somebody they're comfortable with, who they can trust to execute even a shadow of what they themselves are on the hook for delivering to whomever they're beholden to.

AI can't make a client feel good about you. You aren't even "you" if you're an AI -- you're just a tool. Somebody who hires you to build a house doesn't believe in the hammer, they believe in the person wielding the hammer. They believe in the vision of what they will eventually receive. You have to have kind eyes and nuance and a soul to deliver that kind of value, and frankly, a computer program that can play on your emotions and manipulate you is not a computer program that you can trust -- it's just another human -- and courts exist because humans can't trust each other!

Who on Earth wants that as their (automated, unpredictable) hired help??