AI and war, some notes

Personal Introduction

Before starting, I would like to give a brief personal intro about myself. My study of computer science was all by accident. I mean I was not one of those people who shifted for passion (passion for money but we don’t say it). I was not really into this field, but I somehow studied this field and worked in companies serving their mission. After working, I can’t deny somehow I loved some parts of this profession while I hated other parts, but overall I think it is a profession. Some people do it well, others don't. Some people get paid more than others, and overall as a human, maybe you tie your job to your identity but you should not since your values is not really your profession.

AI and War Analogy

If you look at the war, how people think of it and what they predict about you will find some similarity to this AI hype. The goal of this article is to answer one question:

WILL AI replace you as SWE or not?

plus some notes as the title says.

The quick real answer to this question is:

No one knows what will happen.

Same as the result of war, no matter who against who, same goes for AI. Any other answer should be taken as opinion, not rejected nor accepted, and remember most of the opinions are biased.

Personal Opinion

My personal opinion (or answer) to this question is:

No, but the view will change. Things will change, but no one can predict beyond this change.

Notes

I would like to put down a few notes just after writing my opinion:

1. Predicting the Future

To predict something, whether you are an AI model predicting something, or a person predicting your friend’s next move, you need to know two things:

1. Knowing the past well
2. Being currently inside this thing, not far away from it (it might be a war you are in, a job you are good at, a person you meet regularly and know very well).

Knowing a little or nothing, you should not talk by any means about this thing.

Keep in mind, those two conditions don't guarantee you are smart enough to predict the future of this thing though.

2. Old Working Methods

In the old golden days, how did we work? Copy & paste!

• You learn some syntax that covers most cases.
• You build some bulletproof projects that have within them syntax for most cases you face.
• When needed, you either copy from those repos or start searching to find a link from Stack Overflow.

Side note: this is why eCommerce is a project in every tutorial, it combines many areas that you deal with.

This thing you got stuck at (and its solution) will be saved somewhere for any future case later.

3. People Come Before Opinion

We can classify people who talk about AI as follows:

• Someone with real experience and knowledge: their opinion is just “no one knows.” They admit the change without more garbage, or maybe give advice for the future.
• Angry folks (for many reasons, maybe a client or someone with personal issues) will keep writing “RIP …” before anything they post. We respect people's wishes anyways, even the ones who don’t know anything.
• Someone old enough who started their career as JS form validator (yes, there was a job for that where those old people were getting paid for and maybe other benefits, but now after their pockets are filled enough they have nothing to lose). It is actually a good psychological experiment showing how selfish humans are.

The Role of Coding

This job was created so that anyone who has a business and can utilize this machine (this machine that is called computer) in his business can use it.

Coding itself has no goal and provides no value. People will keep using those machines, but the shape will change. How will it change? No one knows.

• For me, I know how to fix my bike and some parts of my house, but I pay others to buy my time.
• Sometimes I do it myself.
• If someone needs to hire someone, he will.
• If he can vibe code it, totally fine.
• Sources were always open to all. Retrieving was slower, but now it is faster.
• The more we do something faster, the more we are required to achieve.

As mentioned in the beginning, previously when someone gets stuck and finds a solution, he learns a new thing, and over years he learns more.

AI Impact Example

Now we have a machine that was trained on a massive amount of data, and a user who has just a small amount of info in his head.

• Let's say all what he knows about looping is "for loop," and he asks AI to do something related to looping.
• If AI decides to use "while," now the user has to learn it.

This is a very basic example to say the bar is raised, and this is why this person with 25 years of experience tells you he didn’t write any code in the last year (he saw it all).

If you know what exactly will happen after a war, you can tell what AI will do.