We keep saying that developers are not just “coders” – they have to understand requirements, they have to participate in the meetings, they have to do the estimates, they have to do demos, they have to process feedback, they have to implement proper security, etc. So, of course, an AI coding agent can’t replace developers. Right?
Well…
Let’s make one big assumption, which is that AI will be able to start writing well-tested code based on the requirements. What happens then?
The product owner will go to <Jira/Excel Spreadsheet/Some other tool> to define requirements. AI coding agent will review those requirements and ask questions. The product owner will update those requirements. The coding agent will implement. The product owner will test it and provide feedback. The coding agent will fix issues, and this process will continue.
Did I miss something? Ah, developers…
Ok, so you could say that developers are needed to properly organize code, to consider security, etc. Actually, that’s not the case. What’s needed is a well-defined set of application architecture requirements which could be applied to all applications within the organization. A lot of that is not per-application, though, so you don’t need a developer, you need an architect who can put those requirements somewhere so that an AI agent working on a specific application were able to add those common application architecture requirements to what needs to be implemented.
But what about the developers??
Well, perhaps there will be specific tasks which have not been done, yet, and, hence, the coding agents will be struggling with those (due to the lack of training data maybe). Or, perhaps, there will be a need for code reviews, at least until the coding agents become highly reliable. It’s all possible, and neither of that looks like a solid / stable / long-term job opoprtunity.
For now we can keep fooling ourselves by how those agents are not too reliable, while, in the meantime, they are quickly becoming better. Assuming they will eventually become good enough in coding, could you point me to some flaws in what I wrote above just so I could possibly sleep better knowing the “dev” side of my job is safe?
