The genies are out of the bottle. Let’s take as a given that augmented coding is steadily reducing the cost, skill barriers, and time needed to develop software. (Interesting debate to be had—another day.)
Will this lead to fewer programmers or more programmers?
Economics gives us two contradictory answers simultaneously.
Substitution . The substitution effect says we'll need fewer programmers—machines are replacing human labor.
Jevons’. Jevons’ paradox predicts that when something becomes cheaper, demand increases as the cheaper good is economically viable in a wider variety of cases.
Both can't be right. Or can they?
Another way of looking at the contradiction—if programs are cheaper to write today than they were yesterday, then we should be more likely to write them today. But, if programs are going to be cheaper to write tomorrow, then why not just wait until the cost goes to zero? This is the deflationary spiral, the urge to defer investment leading to less economic activity leading to lower prices leading to the urge to defer investment.
What’s a software executive to do? A programmer? What we’d like is a strategy that:
Let’s us act today.
Doesn’t rely on information that just not available.
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