There are a lot of changes affecting everyone these days, but we don't really know what the future holds. How are you thinking about the future?
Are you more optimistic or pessimistic for the future of the software development career?
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Latest comments (26)
I'm overly optimistic in the next few decades of software development. During the 2000s, my teachers were arguing that we'd be using modular code blocks to create giant complex thinking programs by slotting them in like legos. Yet here I am, being paid a lot of money to make buttons look pretty.
I think in 50 years, when we have Universal Basic Income - that's when I think software developers will start to fade away. Hopefully by that point, we do have lego-esque code formatting and software development isn't about pouring through millions of lines of text, but moving blocks around. And now that I say that, I think that's the future my 2000s teachers were thinking when they were programming in the 70s-80s.
Until then, being a developer is amazing I love every bit of my work.
The problem solving skills involved in software development will be around for a long time. We just need to adapt to the new interfaces between computational systems and users.
I am optimistic but I think there are some career traps people can fall into. One could focus on doing the same trivial tasks over and over forever or until that problem ceases to exist. I think there are a lot more opportunities for specializing in different areas.
I'm optimistic in the sense that I know my career writing code will never cease so long as I don't want it to.
When I finished school in Dec 2019, I thought I had seen a lot of opportunity. Then I hit the work force and came across even more opportunity. To this day I'm learning about new technologies and while it is a bit inundating, it leaves me optimistic that I'll likely never be short of work (so long as I put in the effort to learn it at least lol).
Fully optimistic! I can't wait to program with AI assistance using a neural lace type interface!
They say the best chess players are AI-supported chessmasters. You're on to something!
I see a lot of great potentials happening! I would love to work with some neural interfaces! On a side note, I often think that when a computer crashes, it temporarily became sentient, went insane and lost its tenuous grip on its new reality. Reboot. All gone. And in the seething rithes of burgeoning awareness another bubble begins to rise. Will it too pop, or struggle and float free? Hmm, you can tell I just woke up after a long night of coding! Cheers! 🤓
I don't mean to be the downer in this thread but overall pessimistic, at least in the scope of decades.
I think the near future has a lot of reasons to be optimistic, I think software development will be in high demand for quite a while, but I don't think this trend will continue in the long term. I don't think the breaking point will necessarily be the global pandemic or the recession that's in tow; I think it'll be loss of profitability. When big tech companies (or maybe even not so big tech companies?) and venture capital start to see their return on investment start to slow is when we'll start to see the really scary stuff happen. In a similar vein I also think companies like Fiverr and Upwork are ominous signs of the world to come.
Software is expensive and I expect there to be an overall trend to drive down the cost of making software (and we're already seeing that). The first big boon to saving profitability has been the so-called open source revolution. The next one, I suspect, will be the large-scale devaluing of developers themselves. What happens after that point though is anyone's guess.
When I see stuff like AI making code based on a comment you give it, I feel pretty pessimistic about the future of development. But when I see that 99% of the time, the "fads" that people thought would kill off other technologies don't, I feel pretty optimistic.
Yes, I foresee there will tons of new jobs that will be supporting or another specialisation for developers. Similar to how the job of data scientist, developer advocate, chatbox developer & DevOps was created.
The future is now. I try to be optimistic, because our state of spirit influences our actions. And I work on my adaptability skill.
Definitely optimistic. All the large companies that hire programmers I starting to think and consider the idea of all those software developers working from home or remotely.
Telemedicine and other areas are going to be booming. Lots of people plan to cross train and transfer skills.
So it's more than likely that other areas within the industry will follow suit.