Artificial Intelligence, Devin and Farewell to Software Developers(!)
Published: 2024-03-17 17:12:30

OpenAI has undoubtedly revolutionized our lives. Yes, it has revolutionized the lives of every person, regardless of their profession and their distance from the computer, but we would not be unfair if we say that it touched the lives of software developers the most. CoPilot, developed by Github and OpenAI, was perhaps one of the first footsteps of this revolution. It enabled us to write code faster and easier, and it was improving and improving itself every day. Chatgpt, which was later made available to everyone, Gemini, which has just started to enter our lives, many other artificial intelligence tools, and finally Devin, which is claimed to be the world's first artificial intelligence software engineer.

The revolutions that have come one after another in this short time have undoubtedly created a change in the lives of us software developers. Some people are afraid of losing their profession, while others are about to be convinced that this profession is an unreasonable profession to choose and has no future. Some have found ways to use these technologies to their advantage. Learning faster, writing code faster, delegating simpler tasks to artificial intelligence and finding time to deal with more complex tasks. Some companies seem to have found ways to employ fewer developers. Or everyone thinks that technology companies, which have recently made serious layoffs, are able to work with fewer software developers thanks to Artificial Intelligence.

The revolutions we mentioned above are not the first revolutions of software. This is not the first time that software developers have made such a shocking progress and have to keep up with it.

As humanity, we have created 9000 different programming languages since the emergence of the first computer. Some of these languages became very popular in their time and were used by everyone. Experts in these languages emerged and continued to develop better software as if they would never be shaken.

But revolution was always at the door. Programming languages that are closer to human language, easier to learn and write, and developed for specific tasks have emerged and started to replace popular languages. Slogans that everyone can now learn software were already being shouted in the mid-1990s. In the early 2000s, it was said that software would be taught in primary schools, everyone would be a software developer, and we would continue our daily work, needs and communication with software languages. It was discussed whether programming languages could also be used for human communication.

As programming languages became easy to learn and fun to write, a thesis was put forward every day about which profession was finished and which type of person was no longer needed. Software had become an enemy to people who did not know it.

However, new technologies and languages were also the enemy of software developers. Software developers who did not improve themselves and did not follow innovations that specialized in only one language were lost on the dusty shelves of history. Good software developers produced better software and made the work of both people and themselves easier. This has led to the development of better software developers and the elimination of worse software developers, and has continued to this day.

When software developers developed Google Translate in 2006, it was thought that the translation profession was coming to an end. However, today, Google Translate continues to pave the way for better translators to be trained, for foreign language learners to learn more languages, and for those who do not know the language to benefit, rather than ending the profession of translators.

Technology develops, everyone has to keep up with it. Those who cannot keep up will perish. Programming, which is done with small holes and protrusions drilled into copper plates, has become full of artificial intelligence tools that show us all classes starting with that letter when we press a letter, enable us to update and correct the entire code with a single click, and produce examples when we tell us the code we want to write.

These developments will not destroy software developers, but they will definitely contribute to the development of better software and software developers.

We are now in Devin's era. He can design and code a certain level of software tasks on his own. So what does this mean? This now means a great opportunity for us, software developers, to do much more complex and bigger jobs. According to some, it is a farewell to software developers.

I can understand why the good news that every new artificial intelligence tool will bring the end of software developers is spreading so much on social media. For the last 20 years, software developers have threatened the professions of many people with their innovations and inventions. Of course, imagining that it is their turn may feed our sense of pleasant fantasy and revenge.

However, this new era is nothing more than a light that progresses much faster and indicates that many more software developers can do much bigger things.

Nvidia CEO made a statement in the past weeks implying that learning software is no longer necessary and that we are teaching software to our children in vain. But isn't that all big companies want anyway? Don't bother, we will do it on your behalf and you just pay us.

No. Software is growing like never before and will continue to grow. Maybe it is not a very distant possibility for the dreams made in the late 90s to come true. However, in order to achieve this, we need an artificial intelligence that helps us, rather than an artificial intelligence that controls us. Otherwise, it will be impossible for us to distinguish whether the thing to which we are entrusting our vital decisions is an artificial intelligence or a giant company.

In order to realize this, instead of saying goodbye to software developers, we should know that we need them more...