I think creative analysts may have a brighter future than programmers. When almost anyone can build software, the real skill shifts from knowing how to build something to understanding what is worth building in the first place. Creativity, judgement, curiosity and the ability to see consequences may become far more valuable than simply being able to write code.

Taste.

I love how every one of these "how do we cope now" essays makes the assumption that the progress has now stopped, and what we currently have is what needs to be adapted to.

Humanity really does not want to look at what is happening.

Market

I feel it's more nuanced than this, at least for now.

It's true to say anyone can build software, but that doesn't make the software good and it's not true to say that's specifically reliant on taste.

As an example I am working with an Entrepreneur right now who has no coding experience but have successfully made a product which they have also already sold to a mid sized company.

However without my involvement and knowing the right levers to craft the AI the software just wasn't performing how it needed to despite the latest frontier models trying their hardest to achieve what he was stating.

At least for now there's still a need for experienced devs.

The market decides as it does for everything else.

>When almost anyone can build software, the organizations that win will not be the ones that build the most

It's not possible to A/B test a huge amount of software. The sample size of the real world is not that big.

Delusional.

Let me illustrate with a similarly dumb question:

When anyone can buy legal forms from an office supply store or make photocopies from books, why pay for a lawyer and who decides what needs a contract anyway?

That was likely a real question that got some debate in the 20th century only further compounded by the internet by the end of that century. Guess what? We still have lawyers.

This problem is not new. The new thing is that anyone can understand the core problem they’re trying to solve without involving a dev team by quick ideation and rapid prototyping.

Just as always, it’s then up to the company to prioritize what to focus on - Just like how it’s always been.

* Don't hold onto an idea or prompt output just because you spent time on it.

* Writing code is easy. Maintaining it is hard.

* If it doesn’t save time or generate revenue, it’s just an expense.

* Output does not equal value.

It seems like the author is pitching topological teams and responsible engineer concepts, sprinkled with decision governance.

None of that is really new, but it’s the chaos of silos, narrow decision frames and lack of detailed understanding by decision makers which probably accentuates the adoption of new concepts.

"Years later the line of business asked for longitudinal reporting, cross-domain aggregation, and planning. The tool integrated with nothing, extended to nothing, had no underlying data platform, could not scale, and had to be rebuilt from scratch."

Any project that takes 2 weeks effort and lasts years (since it doesn't say how many, I read it as 3-5) delivering value is a win. That it needed to be thrown away? That's a couple of people out sick.

Building quality software with LLMs is still very time-consuming. The vast majority of people are not going to bother, regardless of how low the bar to entry is, because time is not free. That and making software is not interesting to most people, for the same reason assembling electronics is not interesting to most people. It's a niche interest with limited mass appeal. For those two reasons, the software profession will survive AI.