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With AI looming, is there still space for new coders? (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago by d0ct0r0nline@lemmy.world to c/programming@programming.dev

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For some background, I originally wanted to break into programming back when I was in college but drifted more into desktop tech support and now systems administration. SysAdmin work is draining me, though, and I want to pick back up programming and see if I can make a career out of it, but industry seems like it could be moving in a direction to rely on AI for coding. Everything I've heard has said AI is not there yet, but if it's looking like it hits a point where it reaches an ability to fully automate coding, should I even bother? Am I going to be obsolete after a year? Five years?

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[–] abhibeckert@lemmy.world 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

AI is a tool for coders to use and it will never make coders obsolete. As someone trying to enter the industry, my advice is lean into it and use AI as a learning tool.

Having said that - it is pretty hard to find a job in the industry right now, due to all the layoffs. Those layoffs are related to covid not AI, so it should be temporary... but in the mean time you're likely to be competing for jobs with people who have decades of experience.

I believe there is still a shortage of developers long term, but short term not so much.

[–] RandomDevOpsDude@programming.dev 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I find it very difficult to recommend generative ai as a learning tool (specifically for juniors) as it often spits out terrible code (or even straight up not working) which could be mistaken as "good" code. I think the more experienced a dev is, the better it is to use more like a pair programmer.

The problem is it cannot go back and correct/improve already generated output unless prompted to. It is getting better and better, but it is still an overly glorified template generator, for the most part, that often includes import statements from packages that don't exist, one off functions that could have been inline (cannot go back and correct itself), and numerous garbage variables that are referenced only once and take up heap space for no seemingly no good reason.

Mainly speaking on GPT4, CoPilot is better, both have licensing concerns (of where did it get this code from) if you are creating something real and not for fun.