This is the reason why there are billions upon billions of dollars being invested in AI. There isn't enough return if it just replaces software developers.
I'm not saying that it will replace software developers and/or everyone else but that's the implication behind the investment.
No matter what happens, I think there will be as much demand for programmers as anything else.
I remember when I worked at a design agency, we spent so much time trying to select project management software, but nothing ever really fit our specific needs. We never considered trying to commission something custom, because a decade ago, that would have been totally nuts for a 20 person company. Nowadays I absolutely think we would have just made something in-house.
I was a teacher at a K-12 school last year. The admin team was trying to select new curriculum mapping software (a system which lets teachers see what kids are learning across different grades and subjects at various levels of granularity). The standard solutions for this all suck. The admin eventually decided to just create something custom, using AI.
I suspect that every company is going to want bespoke systems which are perfectly tuned to their needs, once it becomes financially viable to do so.
I've been on a vibe-coding binge to create a bespoke tool for myself over the last week. I haven't looked at the code once. Couldn't tell you how it's designed, because I never needed to look, despite having over a decade experience developing software professionally.
I struggle to see this process from a less technical person's eyes so it might not be this easy for everyone, but it really feels like we're close to the point where deeper software skills are only going to be valuable for either very large codebases or ones that require scaling, which doesn't apply to most of that bespoke internal software.
The hiring for those roles might be closer to "knows our domain well" than "knows the tech stack"
> The hiring for those roles might be closer to "knows our domain well" than "knows the tech stack"
This does seem likely to me, no matter what. But:
> Will software developers be the ones making it, or will it be the experts in the relevant domain?
In World #1, I imagine there will be someone whose job it is to produce the software, yes, and they'll probably do a much better job if they have a strong conception of how software and computers work.
... that only requires intelligence. Some jobs require more than just intelligence—for example, nurses, judges, reporters, teachers, caregivers, therapists, social workers, paramedics, firefighters, police officers, electricians, plumbers, mechanics, trial lawyers, managers, and diplomats. These roles also depend on some combination of physical skill, human connection, trust, judgment, accountability, and the ability to act in real-world situations.