I’m Astonished That Developers Said This About AI

Written By The Secret Developer

The Stack Overflow Developer Survey provides a glimpse into the mindset of software engineers worldwide and the 2024 edition is no different.

If we are to infer one thing about developers in 2024 it is this: contradictory. That’s because developers believe AI is not a threat… But it’s also great?

Why Not Both?

According to the survey, 68.3% of developers believe AI tools are not a threat to their job. At the same time, 72% of developers have a favorable view of AI tools in development.

I’m not an AI expert (Andrew Ng seems to simply teach linear regression), but it seems to me that we might be living in a state of collective denial.

Netflix wasn’t a threat to Blockbuster. The U.S. would be able to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Travel agents will last forever, or so they thought. We might just be at the inception of a new technology that will certainly be widely beneficial, but might also be incredibly destructive.

It might just be time to wake up.

Denial, Optimism, or a Coping Mechanism?

Developers are notoriously confident (by that I mean arrogant). It’s part of the job and for the past 60 years has ensured great value salaries. 

We all know writing a function that nobody else understands gives a level of job security. Confusing your product owner with a complex description of a technical problem is a genius move. Calling renaming a function a refactor is a pro move.

Yet these skills might be nearing the end of their life cycle. AI doesn’t care about our handcrafted abstractions and clever solutions. It doesn’t get bored during a refactor or complain about meetings (The Secret Developer does both of these, I know). AI is a machine that generates code with the confidence and quality of a senior engineer who refuses to check Stack Overflow or run any tests before committing their pull request.

The idea that AI won’t get better is utterly misguided. The idea that AI isn’t a threat is adorable. Maybe developers think AI can’t replace them because they’ve seen its hallucinations firsthand. Yet it wouldn’t take a genius to guard against this by using a series of AI systems to check each other’s work at least to the satisfaction of your tech lead.

Sure, AI won’t fully automate everything. Sure, it might not take your job as you’re a special little flower who writes the best code with your mad skillz. But bitter experience tells me that those who get cut first in a layoff will suffer again. The junior devs, the ones who would otherwise learn the trade.

In the short term, this is a dream for developers. In the long term? It’s a talent pipeline disaster. Who are we going to work with in the future? Who are we going to humiliate in the office for struggling to rebase a branch? Who is going to be there to bounce ideas off?

Developers Love AI, Until They Don’t

The 72% of developers who like AI tools are probably the same ones using Copilot to autocomplete their boilerplate. And why not? AI makes mundane tasks faster. Writing yet another form of validation? Copilot’s got it. Fixing a syntax error? ChatGPT will do it in milliseconds.

Remember that the 2024 developer survey is completed by current developers who are happy to delegate mundane tasks to the machine. As the easy work disappears, we have time to drink coffee, hang out in the office gym and hide in the toilet crying. It’s good and fun for us.

But we are effectively replacing the entry-level workforce while assuming that senior devs will just materialize in a decade.

So… Are Developers Contradictory?

They aren’t contradictory, but they’re enjoying the AI perks while conveniently ignoring the long-term risks.

The problem (I believe) is that developers are being drawn into the short-termism of the current AI revolution. It’s all fun now, like petting an alligator in the everglades, but that ignores the long-term consequences of this risky tool.

Make no mistake: I don’t think AI will replace all developers, but it will reshape the industry in ways we’re not prepared for. The next few years will be messy. The job market will tighten. Companies will over-rely on AI, screw things up, and realize too late that they still need real engineers. There will be real pain for developers, the business (whatever that is) and the economy as a whole.

What Should Developers Do?

I’m not a sooth sayer, and I don’t know what the future holds for us.

But I’ve still got advice. Readers of this blog might feel that it is inevitable that I have. In this case, though it’s quite simple.

We need to keep learning. We need to keep rolling with the punches and keep changing. I know that this is the general advice for developers, but it has never been better advice. If I were you, I’d study a course on machine learning and AI too (in fact, I have) because it always pays to keep up to date.

Conclusion

It might still happen that we all get laid off on the machines that come and do all of our work for us and/or kill us all. Which would be something to look forward to.

Until then, I’m just going to sit back and learn a new API. What else would you have me do?

The Secret Developer
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