How will ChatGPT affect software development?3 min read

A few days ago research was published by Tyna Eloundou, Sam Manning, Pamela Mishkin, Daniel Rock, OpenAI , OpenResearch and University of Pennsylvania on “An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models“.

It was pretty astonishing to see the predictions of ChatGPT impact and similar AI tools on the labor market.

Analysis indicates that approximately 19% of jobs have at least 50% of their tasks exposed when considering both current model capabilities and anticipated tools built upon them.

Tyna Eloundou, Sam Manning, Pamela Mishkin, Daniel Rock, OpenAI , OpenResearch and University of Pennsylvania

It’s needless to say it came as no surprise, at least not to me.

Since I linked the document, you can read the whole document (34 pages), and try to create your own opinion.

I want to give my own thoughts about the future of software development and developers in the next 5 to 10 years from now on.

My thoughts

AI made a boom at the end of the last year, the beginning of this year, with ChatGPT. It simply exploded. As time goes by, it’s getting better and better.

In the beginning, it was mostly focused on generating meaningful text, but now you can see it penetrating in design, coding, animation, etc…

Not just ChatGPT, there are a bunch of other tools. Here is a link to an article about some excellent tools powered by AI.

It’s needless to say that we are in a Software Revolution, similar to Industry Revolution before.

Our lives as well as our workflow are dramatically changing. So we will need to adapt to new circumstances.

Software development was already shaken by all sorts of low code and no code tools.

Nonetheless, most software developers are still pretty ignorant to those low-code, no-code, tools. Mostly, it’s hard for them to comprehend that the end customer doesn’t care about their poetically written code but more about the functionality, speed of delivery, and quality at the end. Don’t get me wrong, there are certain circumstances where custom coding is needed, but those are minor exceptions.

On top of this, we now have AI tools like ChatGPT which produce code and to be honest, quite good code actually. It’s good enough to replace juniors completely.

As we all know, this is just the beginning and it already has such a huge impact. Now, just imagine in a couple of years the effect of all of this.

My opinion is that it is going to completely change the software development industry.

To a certain extent, it is going to affect and definitely cut software development jobs.

The best example I’ve read so far is the usage of a tractor for harvesting. It certainly cut the number of people needed for harvesting, but still, you need at least someone to use that tractor or combine harvester. Plus it opens additional workplaces for someone who will need to maintain that tractor/combine harvester.

Is it going to happen right away? Hardly, but in the next couple of years, we will see dramatic changes.

Know what’s going on.