Writing from rural Japan.

You are witnessing the "Hyper-inflation of Syntax." If you measure your worth by LOC (Lines of Code), you are right to be afraid. AI has driven the cost of syntax to near zero.

But here is what I see in my work with old Japanese manufacturers (Shinise): When "Crafting" becomes cheap, "Responsibility" becomes the premium asset.

AI can write 15k lines of code, but it cannot take *Liability* for a single one. It cannot go to jail, it cannot lose its reputation, and it cannot feel the weight of a system failure.

Your job is shifting from "Writer" to "Guardian." Don't compete on volume (Scale). Compete on the ability to take the blame and guarantee the "Why." That is the one thing the algorithm can never optimize away.

There will always be someone whose job is to program computers to do things.

That's us, developers. That will never change. We're the ones dedicated to it.

Execs, managers, HR, salesmen, designers etc won't suddenly want to spend their whole days, not even half of their time, tinkering with a computer so it can do what they want.

Else Basic and Fortran would have made everyone software developers.

Do you feel calmer now? (:

I agree with this guy: https://obie.medium.com/what-happens-when-the-coding-becomes... When you look at the AI as having a Jr. Developer at your disposal to do the mundane things you actually elevate yourself higher than you could individually (without the help) as you focus more on architecture and design and guide the LLM to make incremental improvements instead of decremental ones. That's my take at least.

This one also: https://terriblesoftware.org/2025/12/11/ai-can-write-your-co...

I'm pretty confident that if Ai gets good enough to actually take our jobs, it's going to be good enough to take at least 80% of all knowledge work jobs, if not 100%.

In which case everybody is in the same boat and we'll all be in it together.

I don't really believe software dev is uniquely at risk to AI.

No one really knows. But a few things I think about myself.

1). There are many many people there couldn't probably already write more lines of code than me and work for much much cheaper (in India or wherever). Same is true for you (probably). Yet you still have a job.

2). I have a friend that works as a Software and System Engineer for a complicated product that interfaces with the real world. He has to use Natural Language to create requirements that gets turns into code by natural agents down in the "Supply Chain". There are also integration engineers that work with the naturally intelligent agents that create the prompts/requirements to make sure things don't fail (then triage and root cause when they do)

3. Why not diversify your skills beyond code but also hardware, systems, soft skills, business etc etc.

No one knows the future sadly.

I'm sure we'll all get replaced in a few years. But we won't be alone, the entire society is going to be upended. So we will be part of a vast social and economic experiment in which nobody (1) will be in a position much different from ours. Hopefully, solutions will be found to avoid complete social breakdown.

So I feel like I'm on the Titanic- the ship is sinking and we're going all to hit the water eventually, the trick is to try to keep dry as long as possible. If you've been in an organisation for long, and you know the business, the people, the organisation, have domain knowledge and can contribute beyond translating to code someone else's requirements... These are all valuable assets that will keep you relevant and useful for some time.

[1] except government employees in Europe. Those will never be made redundant, whatever happens.

I think grit and hard work will still be valuable attributes, even if AI starts producing perfect software tomorrow.

The world also just doesn't change that quickly.

Even with the most rosy projections, there is no way that software engineers are unnecessary in 2-3 years. Go have a look at METR's projections, even rosy projections aren't getting us to software that can replace engineers in a few years, let alone having that change ripple through the economy.

And nobody actually knows how far AI progress will go on the current trajectory. Moore's law was a steady march for a long time, until it wasn't.

There’s no consensus on whether AI-assisted coding is a revolution or smoke and mirrors. However, if it turns out to be truly revolutionary, do you think there’s anyone better than you to do the prompting? Could your boss do the work you do now? Or the CEO of your company? You seem to be positioned better than most.

Good paper from 2015: "Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation": https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/inline-files/W...

tl;dr: Technology eliminates tasks not jobs, ie. automating routine work while making the remaining human parts more valuable: judgement, problem-solving, knowing what to build and why, communicating with a bunch of stakeholders.

This judgement and communication layer has been stubbornly hard to automate across every previous wave of tech and so it will be with this one.

Even if AI is capable of good judgement in a problem space, are the users of the AI able to ask the right questions to get it to express that judgement? (speaking from experience: no).

Banging out syntactically correct code loses value but communication and end-to-end ownership gains value; translating vague C-suite wishlists into working systems, knowing when _not_ to automate or use AI, navigating organizational constraints, understanding the domain you are working in, the organization you are working in, and directing technology in their service.

As long as there are capital owners they will have a need to exchange that capital for skilled, professional judgement in high value tasks, just the nature of what tasks are considered high value will adapt over time, as it always has.