AI/ML - The Software Engineer's Nightmare?

A New Age
In the wake of December 2015, 11 brilliant minds started a journey that will change the paradigmn of Engineering, software and hardware alike. These men, whilst giving credit to them for this very controversial and yet laudable strides, where by no means the first men to think of machine intelligence or the concept of artificial intelligence.
It was a new age birthed from an older age , so to speak. In 1935 Allan Turing, English Mathematician and Logician did introduce the idea of the ability for machines to be intelligent, if you are a bit familiar with the nuances of AI/ML, then you'd understand when I say he built a mathematical model and even incorporated this in a machine, the Turing Machine which performed very complex computations. Yes, I know you are getting bored. But this is to tell you, that machine learning as we have it today, is a concept that have existed from a long time ago, some might even opine, as long as time itself. Thanks to Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Trevor Blackwell, Vicki Cheung, Andrej Karpathy, Durk Kingma, John Schulman, Pamela Vagata, and Wojciech Zaremba for bringing this concept to the mainstream of Engineering. Credit to these great minds.
Now this was the turning point and currently lives have been destroyed, lives made, new solutions evolved, speed in development, management, support etc are the direct children of this Engineering New Age.
Every new age either leaves some behind or make some stronger, I am here to make you stronger, with a focus on Software Engineers.

The Fear and The Reality

This new age has sparked alot of fears, I will allay these, while i try to be realistic. Most article online have come up with the slogan, "Coding is Dead", "Ui Designers are dead", "You can build a product and deploy in a day", "No need to learn software engineering".

The reality? No one is taking any job away. These founders have found a dream and have fell for the illusory part of this dream. Here are some facts:

• The Web will still Run on Html and Javacsript for atleast some 1 or two decades from now(2025) - Javascript isn't dying anytimne soon
• "No Code" tools are here to stay. But have you used no code tools, even as seamless as wordpress it didn't take any jobs away.(These "no code" tools when used for building a platform, most times need heavy customisations, refactoring etc). Until they get to perfection and evn by then, we are still stuck with your skills, your experiences
• AI Models are brilliant , no doubt, no arguments, but have you used chatgpt to generate code, the outputs "ALL THE TIME", I mean and I repeat "ALL THE TIME" needs to be verified and most times need to be edited, if working on complex systems and logic. Until they get to real artificial intelligence, my advice is craft your code and speed up with AI tools.
• Yes, some big companies are laying off some engineers and other roles. New Founders do not be deceived, these are established companies, most of them dare not lay off some engineers. Ml Engineers, Backend Engineers, System Architects etc, I dare say in a hundred years from now these roles will still be very important. Many start-ups have died before they even have a workable product. Reason: The fantasy and search for building a solution in 2 hours or max in a day.
• Can ML become better, yes, can ML really possess artificial intelligence, we wait to see. But the scare and the hype surprises some us that did rigorous statistics and core engineering. We know machines, they are always garbage-in-garbage out. But then as an open minded innovator, I wait to see and I believe AI/ML can get really close, but "intelligent", in the real sense of the word, I doubt.

Trust me Your job is actually safe if you do the following;
Be a Software Engineer, not just a developer. Do not just code, if you're currently in a role that limits your visibility to the complete platform structure, go out of your scope and see how things really work, how systems connect with each other in the grander scheme of things. DO NOT be satisfied with just being a Backend Engineer or A Frontend Engineer, learn and grow daily outside yoru scope, tasks your brain, use AI to get to your "god mode". Use no code tools when neccessary, be smart. But keep learning, DO NOT HURT YOUR LEARNING.
Have you ever bothered to check just how gpts are made?
Have you taken time to learn a really low level language?
In my opinion if you do not know at least the basic to intermediate of a low level like C, C++, Rust etc, you are not yet a Senior Software Engineer. Yes this applies to even Frontend Engineers. As a frontend Dev, remember you are only masking the implementation of a core programming language that must be translated to machine code. So are you really and Engineer if you don't know at least a fair detail of your machines internal. Answer yourself.

What To Do With The AI/ML Hype

In this life, things will continue to sell in proportion to how much hype, marketing and attention they are given and get. AI/ML is the real deal, but is it worth not learning data structures, data types, standards algorithms? So for you a Junior Dev or a newbie learing , who truly want to be a Software Engineer, here is my biased and time tested advice;
Learn in the following order;
The Basics:

• Learn How The Internet Works
• Learn How The Web Works
• Learn Basic Html(can be optionally skipped by Cyber Security experts but recommended)
• Learn Basic CSS(don't stress, just lear lightly if you are nit on web path)
• Learn Javascript
• Learn Data Structures(use Javascript) (You see these kids up there , they are not leaving soon. Learning them wont take three to four weeks, for a serious minded learner, you are not learning to master but to know, to see first, then decide, Sit, beer in hand, your choice)

The specialisation
Then Choose Your Path from one of the following;

• Web Development - One No Code Development(wordpress, lovable.dev), Reactjs, Angular
• Backend Engineering - One of Nodejs(recommended), python(fastapi, django), Java, Golang
• Cyber Security - one of C(recommended), C++, SQL, Bash/SHell Scripts
• Devops Engineering - One of Python, Bash, PowerShell, Go, Java, and JavaScript
• DevSecops - Python/Bash(must learn)
• Mobile Engineering - One of Flutter(recommended), Kotlin, React Native.

If the list above shocks you, yes you've been mislead by writers not seasoned and battle tested engineers. I am a Seasoned and battle tested Software Engineer, I have architected systems, built systenms from ground up, built servers, configured Ci/Cd , deployed microservcies that power millions of transactions per minute and I have also built and wokred on applications deloyed to playstore and App store. I haven seen first hand how CEO's and HR's collaborate unholily to onbaord Engineers, Cyber Security Experts, Devops Engineers who lack the needed skills. For exampe just because I can set up an EC2 instance and copy and paste a CI/CD script add to github, run a github actions workflow DOESNT MAKE me a devops Engineer. Just because I know a little React without HTML knowledge, doesnt make me True Web Developer.(I agree for the serious minded guys Html is easy to catch up with, but three hours of watching a youtube video is all you need with HTML then practice, rewatch pratctice and within few days you should be done)

Can I Be Left Behind?
Short answer is yes. Fact is some Engineer have been left behind. A newbie who completed two or three course on software development and have practiced for few months, afterwhich takes up AI/ML fully, learned, built even small projects, can be more relevant than a mid level developer who sticks with the old ways, so to speak. Such a mid level engineer has been left behind. Seniors? No replacement for Seniors. I can tell you without mincing words no true Senior Software Engineer will be left behind. Do you know who a True Senior Engineer is? Not the shiny profiles and cv you see on the media or the self assigned senior Software Engineers you. A true Senior Engineer is not a language agnostic, he has knowledge of multiple languages, has built systems, can switch to even a language he hasn't learned and get it to build a systems that works. He knows the similarity between programming stacks. he is nt stuck to a certian stack or environment. No true Senior Software Engineer, who didn't immediately jump on these AI/Ml tools, experimented them and now uses them on a daily. Is it for minor bug fixes, scaffolding boilerplates, for documentation? The list goes on. And I am sure like me, almost every system architect now include AI/Ml as a component, even if not well pronounced, its there and ready to take automation to the next level.
Question is, if you called yourself a Senior Software Engineer and you haven't atleast looked through these tools(AI/ML), been curious to at least experiment, are you truly a Senior Software Engineer?. Seniority comes with efficiency, Speed, quality and modern tooling.

Any and every Software Engineer will be left behind if and only;

1. You choose to laugh at the new AI/ML birth
2. Stick solely to the old ways, like a young man in 1900's who chose to use bicycles to travel long distances because he just refuses to accept cars as a better way to execute a journey speedily and more comfortably. if only that man can see a Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+, hmmmm, will he still want to trel long distances?
3. You as a Junior Developer or A Learner, started by copying and pasting code from GenAi tools , etc. Well that's where your coding starts and that's where it will end.
4. If you are waiting to see AI/ML die or for a government to label it harmful. In Nigeria, we say to such a person, "you go old o"

New Founders And The Mischief

In all these, most new founders still believe that launching an mvp is possible within few days. Is this possible? yes, very possible. But depends on what an "MVP" is and who is in your team. Hirng Juniors , or so called "no-code experts" these days is like saying you do not need to know how to code. This is the begginning of the death of many products.
Here is a fact: Most companies laying off Engineers, are already established with multiple products, running , stable and profitable. Unless you are building a very simple platform, try no code devs for your company alone and come back to this post in 6 months. You need someone who knows how to handcraft code or at the worst a smart human , who can learn and understand that crafting code is inevitable. I dare say there are some solutions YOU CANNOT BUILD WITHOUT CODE CRAFTERS. In the days before the AI boom, we crafted code, but searched tools like stackoverflow, sometimes and most times github, and then documentation of course. Seasoned hand crafters cannot be replaced. So this is not me protecting my Job or trying to advise you to employ Engineers, no, this is me who have a fulltime job at the same time working on other side ventures. I have experimemented first hand and I dare say, I am an authority in tus field.
The mischief is this, new and non-Technical Tech Founders think to follow a company that's already running a hundred handcrafted microservices, a thousand handcrafted and engineered lambda events, a few hundred macro frontend..etc, and sometimes raking billions in revenue. These companies designed their systems already, even designed their own models, trained these and found the need not to keep certain roles.
Now ask your self who designed the models?
So if you are not building an eccomerce, billspayment, or a regular platform(login, signup, fetch profile, make purchase, connect to mobile, get notifications, and any other...you get the point) , try the no code way, as for the pain you will survive my friend and co founder. But in my opinion, the "no code way" emanates from a "code way", so you surely need to onboard a seasoned and thorougly grounded Senior Sotware Engineer(Proven No code expertise), unless you are opened to leaving your product in the shleve while you or the
pure no code guy do the experimentation. I give credit to the no code guys who are good, yes but these are the ones that also know the basics to advanced of how software works, html, css and other nitty gritty. Interestingly I have found that a true Senior Software Engineer, can easily design a scalable no code platform in few hours, because he is an Engineer, a true one.

Where To Go
As a Software Engineer, Do not hurt your learning. Use AI tools to learn, grow and speed up your development process. If and when needed use no code solutions
As a Founder(Tech or Non Tech) do not follow big tech firms , they are positioned for success and have a big share of the market. If you want your share you can't repeat what they are doing or not at least while building.

Disclaimer: All information here are mostly the opinion of a Seasoned and battle tested Senior Software Engineer -Ogaga Adjaro, feel free to negate and do your thing.

Happy Hacking!!