In the early 19th century, the invention of the loom threatened to turn the labor market upside down. Until then, cloth was made by skilled artisans, but the loom enabled more cloth to be made more quickly by less-skilled workers. One could even argue that the Jacquard loom, a loom that allowed for complex weaving patterns via punch cards, was the first computer. 

This technology had a disruptive effect on the labor market and gave rise to the Luddites, a group who would physically destroy looms in factories. Jobs were lost, wages were depressed, and working conditions became more unpleasant. The loom led to social upheaval and drastic change in the short run. 

But in the long run, the benefits were many. Making textile workers more productive meant more and better clothing for everyone. The advances in textile production were a harbinger of capital accumulation, economies of scale, and complementary innovations in many other areas as well, and the Industrial Revolution began.

This is a roundabout way of saying that I can’t stop writing about AI and coding.

Looming apocalypse

Just as the loom worried individual weavers, large language models (LLMs), coding agents, and the accompanying tools are the cause of considerable concern for software developers—and rightly so. We are starting to see shifts in hiring trends, with a decrease in the number of junior developers being hired. I’ve written before about our ongoing need for junior developers, if for no other reason than there will eventually be no senior developers without them, but the impact on the labor market cannot be ignored.

Shifts are definitely happening, and it remains to be seen what the effects will be. While we are a more sophisticated economy than the one faced by the Luddites, the ultimate effects of AI on software developers remain unclear. If AI writes all the code, what, exactly, will junior developers do? Juniors learn from doing the work of executing on design. Without that, how will they grow? How will they learn what they need to know to be senior developers? The short-term impact is something to worry about, however unclear it may be.

Nevertheless, I’m not afraid to make a few predictions about the long term.

If you were to tell a new parent in 1820 that their child was going to grow up to be a telegraph operator, a train conductor, or a professional photographer, they would have looked at you like you had two heads. Those jobs were unheard of at the time. Never mind if you told them their grandchildren would be pilots, radio operators, or movie producers. 

Unknowable possibilities

The future is just as unknowable for our children. AI will open up new horizons and enable new technologies that we simply can’t predict. Most likely, my grandson will have a job title that doesn’t yet exist and that will astonish me in my dotage.

Even as recently as 25 years ago, I don’t think anyone could have conceived of many services we take for granted today. Services like Uber or Doordash—the melding of mobile technology, GPS, and advanced broadband—came about through a magical confluence of a hodgepodge of technologies. AI coding will likely be a part of other technologies that we don’t foresee. It seems likely that AI will enable us to build new things that will make AI even more powerful and capable. 

There is no doubt that AI and LLMs will make the development of software more productive and take it to new, more sophisticated levels. What AI will enable isn’t knowable by us. But what we can be sure of is that this new technology will, as technology always does, combine with human ingenuity to create something amazing and mind-boggling. 

There is no doubt about it. There will be jobs and technologies that will be commonplace in 2050 but aren’t yet even a twinkle in our eyes today.