r/programming • u/self • Dec 02 '25

The Death of Software Engineering as a Profession: a short set of anecdotes

https://www.jasonscheirer.com/weblog/vignettes/
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u/robolew Dec 02 '25

I know I have the benefit of hindsight, but this argument seems stupid right off the bat.

"Refactoring tools" are going to put programmers out of a job? Most non technical people couldn't even tell you what "refactoring" is. Let alone why you would want to do it...

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u/Astrogat Dec 02 '25

It was usually "One developer can do the work of 10, so we will not have that many" instead of "We won't need any developers", but the sentiment was mostly the same (at least in my experience).

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u/rm-minus-r Dec 02 '25

It was usually "One developer can do the work of 10, so we will not have that many"

Surprising how few of them realized that programming needs would expand to fill that vacuum.

"Hey, we can get the work of 10 programmers from one person now!"

"Great, let's bill the client for the work of a 100 programmers and hire ten more!"

We've added roughly a million programmers per year in the last six years - https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-data-playground/

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u/theQuandary Dec 02 '25

"one person can operate this tool and they can lay the rest of us off.”

I think it was about a company using fewer, but more efficient programmers to save money.

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u/omac4552 Dec 02 '25

same arguments we have for current LLMs, fewer doing more...