This article has been moved from IEEE spectrumcareer newsletter. Register now for useful tips, expert advice and practical strategies, I wroten partnership with a technology career development company Tarot And We'll deliver to your mailbox for free!
Cursor, a native code editor for artificial intelligence, recently reported that he writes almost a billion lines of code every day. That's one billion lines of production-grade code ingested by users every day. If we generously assume that a strong engineer writes a thousand lines of code a day, Cursor does the equivalent of million developers. (For context: while working on Pinterest And MetaI usually write less than 100 lines of code per day.)
There are only about 25 million of them software developers all over the world! Naively, it seems that Cursor is rendering a significant percentage of programmers obsolete.
The question arises: is it worth learning to program at all?
The answer is a resounding “yes.” The above fear-based analysis of Cursor misses several important points.
First, the demand for software is insatiable. Getting a computer to follow our instructions correctly (i.e., code) is incredibly valuable from an economic perspective. However, for several decades now, the number of people with specialized computer skills has been limited. If AI tools allow us to write more powerful code, many more people, companies, and industries will benefit. As Marc Andreesen famously noted in his 2011 essay:Why software is eating the world“Demand for software is elastic. As software becomes cheaper, we see a disproportionate increase in demand.
There is no such thing as finishing a software project. People are very good at demanding more products and services, and software will inevitably play a role in this future.
Another important observation is that AI code is simply a continuation of evolution software development. In the 1970s we programmed with punch cards. Then we started writing low-level code using the keyboard. Then we moved on to higher level languages. In each subsequent era there was a significant increase in the number software engineers while increasing the productivity of each individual. We've seen this storyline before: AI is just another tool to give us superpowers.
Coding Tools such as Cursor or Devin are aimed less at replacing software engineers than at increasing the number of software engineers. Going forward, writing code will not be limited to people with a certain title; everyone, including lawyers, accountants and doctors, will develop software. Cursor will not replace the 25 million software engineers we have today. Instead, he will create millions more.
—Rahul
IEEE spectrumannual ranking best programming languages here – and perhaps he is the last. Programmers are now rejecting many public expressions of interest in different languages (e.g. Google search queries and Stack Exchange queries), which have served as key ranking metrics since 2013. What the move to AI coding tools means for the future programming and how do we monitor the coding situation?
Also in the area of how AI affects programming: Stanford The Digital Economy Lab has published a report that finds early evidence that employment has hit young workers in occupations that rely on… generative AI the biggest, including software development. The report uses data from the largest wages provider in United StatesADP to get up-to-date employment and earnings data for millions of workers.
The Trump administration recently issued an executive order adding a $100,000 fee to the new H-1B visa petitions. Large technology companies such as Amazon are among the largest H-1B employers, but some positions in higher education may also be affected. Inside Higher Education reports which institutions have the most of these visas and how they compare to other industries.
Articles from your site
Related articles on the Internet
