
Ask: Will coding ever be made redundant? - gitgud
Some friends of mine (mechanical engineers) once asked me (software engineer) if I was worried about my career in the software industry, as they were certain that apps are just made in drag and drop editors and people didn&#x27;t need to code any more... Thus programming was becoming redundant.<p>This seemed ridiculous at the time (still does) but I sometimes wonder if code will ever be made obsolete? what could replace it?<p>After looking at countless graphical implementations of programs and dealing with the frustration of GUI builders, I just can&#x27;t see <i>CODE</i> ever going away. To me code is the essence of automation, the logic and brains of a system. It would appear you could replace everything else but that...
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666lumberjack
The idea of drag-and-drop editors replacing code is laughable as far as I'm
concerned. We might eventually see compilers evolve to the point where a
specification written in natural language can be translated into a program
automatically, but as the old joke goes at that point writing a sufficiently
detailed specification _is_ the programming.

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swatcoder
This reduces to the question of: will technical innovation slow down?

Hand-crafted code, composed by thoughtful experts, is a really useful tool
when _exploring_ new technologies or when _adapting_ technologies to new
industries.

But as when a technology-industry fit matures, and innovation slows down, you
can start working in larger grains that require less crafting and less
expertise. The problem domains are understood, the tools are stable, and
there’s an affordance for inefficiencies. People with industry expertise and
vaguely literate in programming concepts can build the tools they need without
the intervention of a professional engineer.

This maturation process has already happened a thousand times in various
industries, and sometimes we see it disrupted by new innovation.

If there continues to be widespread innovation and disruption, we’ll still
need lots and lots of professional programmers writing code.

If, instead, industry problems can genuinely be optimized or technical
innovation can encounter practical limits, professional coding will narrow to
smaller and smaller niches.

We’re probably still a long way from the latter scenario. I’d say your career
as a software engineer is safe. Your daughter’s? Harder to say.

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CM30
Yes and no.

No, we'll never see a complete replacement for coding. Unless we get literally
god like AI that can code by magic, it's simply not possible to replace all
programmers/developers/coders with a tool that lets people do the same thing
with a drag and drop or WYSIWYG interface. It's simply too complicated for
that, and the more ambitious edge cases simply can't be built like that.

At the same time however, a lot of people's needs are also quite modest, and a
fairly simple system that could do a few things well could replace many of
those needs. Look at the CMS market for example. For many sites and web apps,
something like WordPress or Drupal can indeed be used to build them with
minimal coding experience, just by adding in a few plugins and a custom theme.
Same goes with online services like Shopify or Squarespace or what not. For
many simple use cases, that's enough.

Another good example would probably be the Super Mario World tool
'Blockreator'. It's basically a GUI for building simple interactive elements
for the game, which lets you drag and drop commands like 'if condition X do Y'
as well as 'set whatever variable to this value' (like the timer, power up,
coin count, etc). It's not gonna do everything a power user wants, but for
many people who just want a few extras in game, it's a time saver.

So the answer is yes and no. Yes at the low end you'll likely see more and
more services/tools/whatever crop up that make hand coding less necessary than
it was in the past, and many individuals and small businesses won't need
anything more complex than that.

But coding will always exist in some form, since the high end requires bespoke
stuff that can't easily be done through some fancy tool or service.

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avoidwork
Code is just instructions, so ... yeah humans can totally be replaced with
something more efficient & better... but what does 'better' really mean? is
the output lower latency? higher concurrency? did it do something amazing with
little resources?

I've only been in the industry 20yr, but I've met a wide range of people with
different goals that drive many factors of many outcomes; as long as people
are in the picture stuff is going to be inefficient from 1 pov, while at the
same time human diversity can be a huge pool of talent/skill/creativity that a
code generator can't have by design (it's solving for efficiency).

It would be a mistake to think things are never going to change. I think it's
more reasonable to plan for change and try to keep a head of it by being
relevant in a field that interests you, and has demand.

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BjoernKW
Some aspects of coding as we think of it today probably will be made redundant
and in fact have continuously been for quite some time now.

Higher-level programming languages, abstractions, libraries, IDEs: These are
all tools that automated one or several aspects of coding

However, short of an AGI some tasks will still require a human being,
particularly the translation of business requirements into code. Humans get
this wrong frequently enough due to communication failures. I don't see how a
machine without at least human-level intelligence could perform better at
this.

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m11a
Consider website builders. Have they made web developers redundant? Generally,
website builders suck. They do not allow for the customisation and flexibility
required. Static site generators, such as Jekyll, are pretty good for their
limited scope, but tools such as Webs generally remain bad for any purpose.

I don't believe some kind of drag + drop editor will replace programming. Even
if some kind of editor could, additionally, design underlying functionality
and design well, programming also involves a certain style of thinking.
Mathematical thinking, for example, is not only applicable in research
mathematics. I don't think "business people" could design apps better than us,
even if such a tool exists. Indeed, the converse has been true, however
(software engineers have indeed managed to replace, to some extent, business
people). Startups have thrived on the idea of not monetising early, I think
that's something missing in traditional business.

I don't see software engineers being replaced by drag+drop editors, or the
typical users of such editors, ever. Conversely, I believe software
engineering is one of the most secure job fields there is (some others being
mathematicians, scientists, journalists, etc.) - though I may have a bias in
this respect.

What may be true, however, is software engineers being replaced, to some
extent for some tasks, by their own creations. Although it may be an
interesting discussion, it usually follows a lot of hypothesis and any
evidence-based discussion on that matter tends to be moot.

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codegeek
Coding is a means of getting something done. They are just set of instructions
that computers can process. So technically, there is an argument to be made
that tomorrow we could have a new way of creating instructions for computers
and not through human coding? Who knows. Just like when cars replaced horses,
it did not change the fact that people still need to travel. Just the "how
they travel" part changed.

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m11a
Indeed, we could see industries change. Technology itself has changed many
others intensively, who's to say it itself cannot be changed.

Though, unless we can create some self-refining process to create software
automatically, some group of people must be creating it. Unless another group,
other than software engineers, would be better and more able to apply their
current skills to whatever coding becomes in the future, it is more likely
that it will simply just be software engineers refining the way they work,
rather than being replaced by a different group of professionals.

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sloaken
A friend told me a story from the early 80s. He had double majored in CS and
Accounting. He was interviewing and the guy told him programming was doomed.
EVERY thing he needed he could do with this new fancy spreadsheet. LOL

When I went to school I had to learn assembly language. Even then C was a good
replacement for it, but I still see jobs for people who can program assembly.
WTF...

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artemisyna
Act of software engineering overall probably no, aspects of it yes.

Just like how industrial jobs are increasingly becoming "human manages
machines doing labor" rather than "human does labor", I imagine the same will
happen to coding. A computer won't be able to write all your code for you, but
it will become more efficient to work in conjunction with one.

That's already happening with lots of existing tasks related to software
engineering. (Searching through code, linting, etc.) ML will mean there will
be more of them.

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segmondy
Yes, some parts of coding will be made redundant. It's already happening
partially with APIs, everything doesn't have to be built in house anymore.

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DrNuke
Dystopian, self-programming molochs making everything but themselves
redundant? Enter deep reinforcement learning 2030.

