Claude 3.5 Sonnet just coded a full-featured file upload (link to demo mp4) component for me:
1) + a spinner
2) size restriction
3) file extension restriction
4) + a preview preview
5) + state management
6) + upload to a Cloudflare R2 bucket
If you still sell code, you definitely have to take a break and think about your future. What they pay you for today will cost way less tomorrow. Not because programmers will vanish, but because one programmer will be able to do x100 more work and therefore the market will need x100 fewer programmers. It is the basic law of supply and demand.
One possible way for you to still earn money with your laptop is by building your own products. You do not have to aim for millions. You can build a small project that brings you a net $10K/m and live a happy life in the future 🙂
Top comments (5)
This is not necessarily true. We shouldn't forget about Jevons paradox - when resource (e.g. code, creating digital product) is cheaper/more accessible, it may increase demand (e.g. more companies will try to create digital products, thus amount of needed work will increase).
Another thing completely is that programmers core work is not about writing code, but about designing systems - abstracting and approximating reality to digital realm, creating sensible and useful boundaries between parts (domains) of system.
And next is that the solution you got from LLM-based text-generator I simply get from using right library, which is proven, constantly maintained code by many people using it in many scenarios. I don't need to reinvent the well, I build on what was already crafted and tested. So why should I use LLM for that?
Building a small project is not the issue. What to build is. And marketing is.
It's the marketing and finding the right market fit.