Software Development in the Era of Productivity Miracle

“We have a duty to be optimistic. Because the future is open, not predetermined and therefore cannot just be accepted: we are all responsible for what it holds. Thus it is our duty to fight for a better world.” — David Deutsch.

Abundance of Intelligence

As machine-learning solutions surpass human performance at many cognitive tasks that had previously been the exclusive domain of people, the odds are rising that the marginal cost of many economically important cognitive tasks will fall close to zero.

Labor is becoming a scalable utility — plug in, power up, and produce.

What could be the effects?

As it becomes faster and cheaper to build software, will that reduce the need for software developers? Reduce the software jobs?

The industry consensus increasingly views software development as a diminishing field, suggesting a reduced need for developers.

I have a different take on it.

Jevons Paradox

In economics, the Jevons paradox (/?d??v?nz/; sometimes Jevons effect) occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the falling cost of use induces increases in demand enough that resource use is increased, rather than reduced. Governments typically assume that efficiency gains will lower resource consumption, ignoring the possibility of the paradox arising.

To simplify, making something more efficient and cheaper doesn’t reduce its overall use; people use it even more.

(Also see Induced Demand)

Let’s see an example,

Around the turn of the 20th century, the revolutionary assembly line process used to produce the Ford Model T lowered the cost of manufacturing a car so much (and so quickly) that a whole new market for mass-market cars came into being.

(source: Assessing the implications of Productivity Miracle)

AI could make a host of previously high-cost items very cheap to provide, such as tailored legal advice, customized software builds, individualized financial planning, and one-on-one tutoring. Consumption of these kinds of cognitive services could balloon.

Let’s face it: Software development is expensive.

Startups often require millions in funding to create their software products. At the same time, small businesses struggle to afford custom solutions, and solo entrepreneurs find themselves unable to automate their workflows due to budget constraints.

As software development costs decrease, it will free up more purchasing power, creating demand.

For instance, if building a custom web application costs $100,000 today, it could drop to as low as $10,000 or even $1,000 in the future.

There is another important key fact about this disruption. AI

Intelligence is the ultimate engine of progress. Artificial Intelligence is best thought of as a universal problem solver. And we have a lot of problems to solve.

Tech will get even bigger. Every market will look like software.

So, what should we do as developers? How should we prepare for the future?

Our biggest problem will be scale.

Now is the time to evolve into a 10x developer. Continue to challenge the norms and discover methods to accelerate software development. Remember, speed is crucial.

As the cost goes down, so will the pay. Today, you earn $10,000 from building one app, and tomorrow, you can make $15,000 by developing 15 apps.

Automate your workflows. Build bots. Clone yourself ???

Whatever the case, you need to think bigger.

In the era of an abundance of intelligence, take your ambition and multiply by 100.