Those who won’t adapt would cease to exist.
Source
Once upon a time, in a world not too different from ours, handmade clothing was the norm.
Skilled artisans would spend countless hours creating beautiful garments, each one unique and crafted with care.
But as technology advanced, machines were invented that could produce clothing at a much faster rate and at a fraction of the cost.
At first, many people were skeptical of the new machine-made clothing.
“Oh — the new clothing lacks the quality and beauty of the handmade.”
“The machine-made clothes suck!”
“No way it is going to replace us.”
However, as time passed, more and more people began to embrace the new technology, seeing the benefits of faster production and lower prices.
The artisans who had once made a living crafting handmade garments found themselves struggling to compete with the new machine-made clothing.
Some feared that the art of handmade garments would be lost forever and that the new clothing would lack the quality and beauty of the handmade.
Many were forced to adapt and learn the new technology, while others were left behind.
Gradually, handmade clothing became a rarity, and the vast majority of clothing that you see today is produced by machines — not humans.
History is repeating itself.
But this time it is for the people in the tech world.
AI-powered tools are here to replace human coders.
These tools will be able to write and debug code faster and more efficiently than humans and at a lower cost.
If you’re worried about job losses and the end of the coding profession — you’re probably right!
I’m not here to make doomsday predictions, I’m here to tell you the truth.
Are you ready?
They Are Coming for You
“Don’t ever get too comfortable, you can be replaced.”— Anonymous
Coding, which was once the backbone of the digital world, will become obsolete soon.
Initially most corporate software was written in machine code. Somebody had to invent the higher-level languages (that were good for a few years). Unfortunately — We’re still using them, ones basically from the 60s, reinventing it over and over again.
AI-powered tools are ready to take over, and traditional ways of writing code will become less popular.
The future may be far different than you have ever imagined.
The tech industry is shifting, and the race is on to adapt or be left behind.
You don’t have to believe me — all you have to do is to take a glance in the reality and you will know what I mean.
Let me show you.
First, let’s look at what all you do in the name of coding, and then we will see how all of it will become irrelevant.
Let’s start from the beginning.
When you were learning to code, you focused on writing code.
That’s what programming is for most people, right?
Like everyone, you’ve learned to write code, but you haven’t learned how to read it.
That’s why you struggle, when it comes to debugging, don’t you?
Imagine that you’re in the middle of a lot of work, and you want to quickly identify what this function does:
Don’t load yourself — All this function does is:
- It duplicates a spreadsheet.
- It throws an error if the original spreadsheet isn’t saved.
- It prepends “Copy of” to the new spreadsheet’s title.
That’s it?
Well, there is one more thing that you might not have noticed (great job if you did!) is that this function also accidentally changes the title of the original spreadsheet.
Missing bugs like this, happens every day.
Debugging is an undervalued skill. Coders who are good debuggers work faster, get more done, and are less stressed out.
ChatGPT only took a few seconds to identify the bug. I don’t know about you, but most people would have taken much longer.
Don’t worry if you couldn’t find the bug at all — it just means you’ll get the most out of AI-powered tools like chatGPT!
Now, most developers work in a codebase that is usually not written by them.
It is common for developers to push out code quickly than writing clean, maintainable code. Meanwhile, the poor souls who come after them are left to pick up the pieces and try to make sense of the mess.
They would spend countless hours trying to untangle the twisted web of code, trying to fix bugs and add new features.
A never-ending cycle of frustration and despair.
I remember this code (written in C ) from my teenage years, and the thought of how on earth someone could ever read and understand this code lingered in my mind to this day (but not anymore).
Making more sense out of any code is easier than ever before. Take some code you want to understand and ask ChatGPT to explain it.
In real life, you might not come across code like this (if you do, go find the person who wrote it).
Using ChatGPT is much quicker than trying to figure out convoluted code.
Replt.it has already started making use of something like this in its system.
Imagine how much faster one could move by generating summaries of codebases.
What else do you do?
Yes — Improve the existing code (or add features)
Adding features?
Ask ChatGPT to improve existing code by describing what you want to accomplish. It will give you instructions about how to do it, including the modified code.
This can be done in your favorite code editor with a single click.
You’re feeling out of this world now that you’ve added some features and improved the existing code, and you decide to go one step further and make the codebase more readable.
The first step would be to align the existing mess of code with the coding conventions.
The person who wrote the code before you came from a C background and has no idea about being declarative, so it is time to correct it — isn’t it?
You’re still not satisfied. Especially after you discovered that some parts of the code are overly complicated, and as the hero that you are, you end up spending some more time simplifying those parts of the code (and sacrificing your personal life).
Btw, It took 3 seconds for chatGPT to simplify the code.
You’re not sure if the code you wrote is actually performant.
You don’t want to leave the codebase in shambles, as the previous coder did.
So, you decide to document the code.
That’s not it.
You want to make sure that the code not just works but works well.
Writing tests is boring but sometimes it is needed. Now, it is not the perfect tool, but indeed it is a great one.
Programming ≠ Writing Code
One can blabber a lot and say nothing, or one can utter nothing and end up saying a lot.
Words have no meaning when you don’t place them together the way it needs to be.
Merely speaking is not equal to having clear communication — If you were married, you would know what I mean.
If you start speaking in your native language, the computer won’t understand a thing.
Code is a conspiracy between you and the computer.
Writing code is not programming. Programming has more to do with problem-solving than writing code.
With the current ways of doing things, we are still stuck in writing code as a way to instruct computers — just like the people who use to code in machine language were struck in 0s and 1s.
Hello World
You might poke fun at those binary coders and wonder why they went through all those troubles to instruct the computers.
Future generations will feel the same way.
Programming is the process of solving problems using a computer. Writing code is just one aspect of this process. It’s a necessary part, but it’s not the whole picture.
If all you can do is write code, you are not a programmer, you are a coder and you are bound to get replaced.
You are the Sentient — You Just Don’t Know It Yet.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent — it is the one most adaptable to change.”— Charles Darwin
Darwin is one of the most significant men to walk in the West.
When everyone was high on religion, he was the one who made you question your own existence. He was the one who told you that you are here not by chance or some grand plan but because your ancestors strived hard to survive.
Whether you like it or not, with tools like chatGPT, writing code and those who only know how to write code will be of no use.
However, just as artisans were able to adapt and learn new skills to remain competitive, coders will be able to do the same by learning more about how to use these tools to their advantage.
The problems and ways we spend our days solving those problems may change. But there will always be problems for humans to solve.
Once writing code will become obsolete, problems solvers would become more valuable.
The shallow showbiz of jargon in name of programming is going to fall, the real thing will prevail.
Programmers in the future will be far more productive than programmers today, capable of feats we can only dream of.
It’s fantastic that the technologies we use are becoming smarter.
It’s a far more intelligent approach.
Only someone who aspires to be the smartest person in the room will be concerned if everything around him becomes smarter than him.
Otherwise, it’s a true blessing.
The tools you are using are evolving scarily fast, it is time you evolve too.
Go out and learn — not for that bloody job but because this is your life, you have to live it.
Yes! Adapting to new ways is painful, but only the living can feel the pain — The dead don’t even feel the cremation fire.
ChatGPT 4 (coming in 2023) could have as many as 1 trillion parameters, capable of delivering more accurate responses.
The currently available AI-powered tools (GPT-3) are still in their infancy, but they are powerful enough to make a significant difference.
The next generation of tools will be far more powerful and accurate.
Those who will leverage it — will go forward, and those who won’t adapt would cease to exist— it is simple as that.
The choice is yours.
Note of Gratitude
I wanted to take this last opportunity to say thank you.
Thank you for being here! I would not be able to do what I do withoutpeople like you who follow along and take that leap of faith to read my post.
I hope you’ll join me in my future blog post and stick around because I think we have something great here. And I hope that I will be able to help you along in your career for many more years to come!
See you next time. Bye!
