
Ask HN: Will tools like Firebase lead to the automation of developers? - thewarrior
We tend to think that developers are immune to automation. However newer tools make smaller teams more productive and allow unsophisticated users to make apps that would have been quite complex to achieve 5 years ago.<p>Looking at the evolution of tools like Firebase and AWS Lambda it would seem that a lot of DevOps positions are at risk of being commoditised or automated away as we simply don&#x27;t need DevOps if the app is quite simple.<p>Imagining what Firebase might be like 5 years from now , a lot of RoR developers could also be at risk. On the other end services like Squarespace and Wix are eating out the bottom end of commodity website development.<p>I have yet to see something similar for Apps or Design but if someone manages to integrate everything end to end then app development could turn into a commodity. And so development becomes a commodity activity that requires much less skill without it necessarily being automated.<p>5 years from now all you&#x27;ll need might be 1-2 developers instead of the 10 you have now to fill in the edge cases.<p>What are the skills that you think are the most immune to commoditisation &#x2F; automation ?
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flukus
No. We've had tools like firebase for since at least the late 80's and
probably much earlier. The one thing they all have in common is that while
they may make simple things simple (many even fail at that), they make hard
things either much harder or impossible. I've seen enough come and go that I
won't even look at firebase.

Remember when COBOL was created nearly 60 years ago it was intended to be
simple enough that programmers wouldn't be needed.

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somecallitblues
We can not yet create a wysiwyg editor that works so you'll be fine.

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soulchild37
Have anyone actually used firebase in production with real users? I have never
seen any developer/company become more productive after using firebase in
production

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miguelrochefort
Yes.

My prediction is that 80% of developers will lose their jobs by 2025.

