Do you think agentic AI (AI Agents) will eventually replace developers, or will it become a tool to enhance their capabilities?
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Generative AI is amazing and can do incredible things, but I do not think it will have the capability of having “good judgement”. I believe humans will be needed whenever good judgement is required. This includes writing code. In the end only a human can be held accountable. The actions of an AI must be under the purview of a human who applies their judgement and is held accountable for the actions of the AI.
Agentic coding will wipe out a large portion of development jobs, 60-80% in my estimation. It is less important what the AI tools can do than what executives think that the tools can do. Managers of an organization are charged with maximizing output at the lowest resource cost. Quality of deliverables is more difficult to quantify and may be a secondary or tertiary topic during sales meetings.
One question is whether the transition to AI coding will be more like the winding down of mainframe jobs as they fell out of fashion or more like the push for IT outsourcing for cheaper talent?
In terms of mainframe jobs, new technology and the distributed computing thought process meant that less mainframe programmers and mainframe operators were required. Mainframe jobs had a brief resurgence around Y2K but mainframes have become a very specialized tool, used for very high-volume operations. Quite a few less seasoned IT people think mainframes (and their programmers) are obsolete.
An oft stated reason for outsourcing to other countries was to have someone else do the lower skill to free up the onshore team for strategic thinking and higher level tasks. In practice, entire onshore teams were laid off. Reducing expenses while maintaining output drives profits.
I agree with the august commenters who stated that programmers will not all be terminated, how many jobs will remain is the open question. I submit that hands on testing of multiple agentic coding tools, especially if you are not a programmer, will give people more of a sense of what will happen with the programming field.
Agentic AI is a powerful tool that enhances, rather than replaces, developers—accelerating workflows and supporting their efforts
Agentic AI will profoundly change the way developers work, but it is highly unlikely to fully replace them. It will serve as a valuable tool, helping to enhance human capabilities, leading to higher productivity and more impactful software developments.
I believe agentic AI will be a powerful tool for developers to deploy once a solution has been identified. My opinion is that developers will evolve into a role that resembles technical orchestration vs. deep coding. Each company I've worked with and for has a unique set of systems, a mix between vendor and bespoke builds. Therefore, developers are needed to understand the best way to deploy an agentic AI function within their existing tech stacks to address and add value to critical business processes.