Generative AIs revolution in productivity is retrenching software developer roles
Summary
While generative AI tools might replace a lot of the head-down grunt work of developers, the rise of these technologies also opens opportunities for elevating their roles within their organizations. The increased adoption of generative AI will also mean developers are expected to act in a higher-level role, pulling AI-delivered resources together to map to the requirements of the business. This shift in emphasis will lead to a retrenchment that means actual programming roles will diminish, and more business-focused developers will be focused on assembling the capabilities they require for particular applications. As the technology evolves, "I believe human programming skills will fade in necessity, and eventually be replaced with human-prompt engineers," Duncan Angove, CEO at Blue Yonder, predicts. • Creating documentation for existing code to help new developers onboard: "We have used AI to provide top-level summaries of sub-systems and then more detailed descriptions of individual modules," says Welch.