Certain types of code are cheap. Proof of concept is cheap. Adding small features that fit within the existing architecture is cheap. Otherwise, I'm not so sure. Coding agents are fantastic at minutiae, but have no taste. They'll turn a code base into a ball of mud very quickly, given the opportunity.
This is such a weird argument, beside obvious #10 which will bite back with a vengeance, because... code can't be cheaper than free!
Since at least the early 80s a LOT of very important code wasn't cheap, it was free. Both free of cost (you could "just" download it and run it) but also free as freedom-respecting software.
I just don't get the argument that cheap is new. Cheap is MORE expensive than free!
I came here exactly to point out what I'm glad to see is 10. "Free as in puppies" is a wonderful way to put it.
Every time I open linkedin I'm scared of how many big heads have taken the wrong lesson that coding almost free == free engineering. So many bait posts asking engineers why they would need to pay them any longer, or being glad they're generating millions of lines a month....this is going to end badly.
> 10. Code is cheap, but maintenance, support, and security aren’t.
I also keep circling around this point. So many software repositories in the AI space seem to follow a publish and forget pattern. If you simply can show that you have the patience to maintain a project, ideally with manual intervention instead of a fully autonomous AI, then you already have an outstanding project.
I had a business owner tell me that they don't need to hire juniors anymore because claude can do all of that work for them. This was not a software shop so it's not even about writing code but I also thought that was something that will bite in the near future. A business that is not investing in juniors is a business that is not investing in the future.
The role of AI in non-software shops is going to be interesting. To a great extent it's not competing with devs, it's competing with Excel. However bad a system your AI can produce, it can't compare to the workflows that a group of non-techies armed only with Office can produce.
On the other hand, like giving a supercar to a teenager, this just enables them to get into trouble faster.
(the "my vibe coded app deleted prod!" stories are funny schadenfreude when they happen to SV startups, whose whole business is pretending to know better. When this happens to a small business who've suddenly lost all their finanacials and now maybe will lose their house, it's a tragedy. And this can happen on a much larger, not AI-related scale, like Jaguar Land Rover: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy9pdld4y81o )
You cutoff a generation of juniors from employment and learning , the seniors are gone and it's all harnesses and AI systems.
I'm not all gloom and doom but the treatment of junior engineers is something I think we will either regret or rejoice. Either will have a spur of creative people doing their own independent thing or we'll have lost a generation of great engineers.
The problem of "instant legacy" systems: something that's vibe coded and reached unmaintainable by either the AI or humans, but is also now indispensable because users are relying on it.
Some of that is already there .. but the users generally have nowhere else to go and ineffective pushback. "Enterprise software" has been awful for decades, things like Lotus Notes and SAP. Everyone hates Windows; everyone continues to use Windows.
If you fire all your SWEs they won't sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting for an AI collapse, they'll career shift. Maybe to an unemployment line and/or homelessness, maybe to something else productive, but either way they'll lose SWE skills.
If you close down all the SWE junior positions you'll strongly discourage young people training in the field. They'll do something else.
Then if you want to go back, who will you hire for it?
You can easily develop with models like GLM 5.1 and Kimi k2.6 at a fraction of the cost of GPT 5.5 or Opus 4.7. Requests often cost just a few cents.
Open-source models have caught up tremendously recently. Those who can’t or don’t want to invest a lot of money can already develop with Kimi and GLM without any problems. We don’t have to wait another year for that.
Sure, but there will always be some monstrosities like Mythos that'll pwn all software written by local models in 0.01 seconds, thus forcing people/companies to use the most advanced paid models to keep up and stay unpwned for 1 second longer.
I am in India, junior developer hiring is all down. Ai has reduced offshoring to India and eliminated the need for janitor work (often offloaded to juniors).
Many people are finding it difficult to even land internships.
The most affected areas are sysadmin, devops, and frontend. Where you'll have very hard time getting any offer.
Companies like BrowserStack are withdrawing campus placement offers.
Meanwhile, I am writing apps for my own use and have reached 10,000+ monthly active users already, even though I am making zero money from doing all this, but it's fun.
The pure "coder" role, per that paper, died out almost immediately. Nowadays it's done by compilers (a deterministic automation). The distinction between analyst and programmer held out a bit longer - ten years ago I was working somewhere that had "business analysts", essentially requirements-wranglers. It's possible that the "programmer" job of converting a well-defined specification into a program is also going to start disappearing.
.. but that still leaves the specification as the difficult bit! It remains like the old stories with genies: the genie can give you what you ask for. But you need to be very sure what you want, very clear about it, and aware that it may come with unasked-for downsides if you're not.
I've found the get-shit-done tool[1] to be quite useful for forcing me to properly plan the implementation and ensuring the context remains small and relevant at all times.
It is slower than when I was just using Claude directly though.
I've tried this, it's honestly not worth the amount of time (and additional context) for the results. I've had more success prompting Claude with manageable and testable iterations.
Planning is good but get-shit-done just added too much planning in my opinion.
Since at least the early 80s a LOT of very important code wasn't cheap, it was free. Both free of cost (you could "just" download it and run it) but also free as freedom-respecting software.
I just don't get the argument that cheap is new. Cheap is MORE expensive than free!
Free but you're responsible for maintaining it means it's not free. It's the same issue as maintaining your own fork. It's just an ongoing cost.
(Though as AI becomes autonomous enough to be the maintainer, that cost kind of goes away. Then it's just the cost of managing the "dev".)
Every time I open linkedin I'm scared of how many big heads have taken the wrong lesson that coding almost free == free engineering. So many bait posts asking engineers why they would need to pay them any longer, or being glad they're generating millions of lines a month....this is going to end badly.
I also keep circling around this point. So many software repositories in the AI space seem to follow a publish and forget pattern. If you simply can show that you have the patience to maintain a project, ideally with manual intervention instead of a fully autonomous AI, then you already have an outstanding project.
On the other hand, like giving a supercar to a teenager, this just enables them to get into trouble faster.
(the "my vibe coded app deleted prod!" stories are funny schadenfreude when they happen to SV startups, whose whole business is pretending to know better. When this happens to a small business who've suddenly lost all their finanacials and now maybe will lose their house, it's a tragedy. And this can happen on a much larger, not AI-related scale, like Jaguar Land Rover: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy9pdld4y81o )
I'm not all gloom and doom but the treatment of junior engineers is something I think we will either regret or rejoice. Either will have a spur of creative people doing their own independent thing or we'll have lost a generation of great engineers.
We’ve been coasting along on a single generation who have ruled with iron fists.
If you fire all your SWEs they won't sit around twiddling their thumbs waiting for an AI collapse, they'll career shift. Maybe to an unemployment line and/or homelessness, maybe to something else productive, but either way they'll lose SWE skills.
If you close down all the SWE junior positions you'll strongly discourage young people training in the field. They'll do something else.
Then if you want to go back, who will you hire for it?
Company brain drain, knowledge leaves with your seniors if you decide to get rid of them, or they just leave due to the conditions AI creates.
I don't know if the above comes to fruition, there's a lot of questions that only time will answer. But those are my first thoughts.
If anything, I would bet that next year you could get today’s flagship performance for significantly cheaper via an open-weights model.
Open-source models have caught up tremendously recently. Those who can’t or don’t want to invest a lot of money can already develop with Kimi and GLM without any problems. We don’t have to wait another year for that.
(Timeframes are hyperbolical).
Many people are finding it difficult to even land internships.
The most affected areas are sysadmin, devops, and frontend. Where you'll have very hard time getting any offer.
Companies like BrowserStack are withdrawing campus placement offers.
Meanwhile, I am writing apps for my own use and have reached 10,000+ monthly active users already, even though I am making zero money from doing all this, but it's fun.
Once upon a time, highly bureaucratic organizations tried to make a distinction between "analyst", "programmer" and "coder": https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/the-myth-of-the-coder/
The pure "coder" role, per that paper, died out almost immediately. Nowadays it's done by compilers (a deterministic automation). The distinction between analyst and programmer held out a bit longer - ten years ago I was working somewhere that had "business analysts", essentially requirements-wranglers. It's possible that the "programmer" job of converting a well-defined specification into a program is also going to start disappearing.
.. but that still leaves the specification as the difficult bit! It remains like the old stories with genies: the genie can give you what you ask for. But you need to be very sure what you want, very clear about it, and aware that it may come with unasked-for downsides if you're not.
It is slower than when I was just using Claude directly though.
[1] https://github.com/gsd-build/get-shit-done
Planning is good but get-shit-done just added too much planning in my opinion.
[1] https://github.com/gsd-build/gsd-2
Buy in bulk and resell. /s