Vogels on the Rise of AI and Developer Productivity
Werner Vogels, Amazon’s long-time CTO, published his traditional “Tech predictions for 2024 and beyond” and this time one of this focus areas was how AI assistants redefine developer productivity.
When reflecting on Vogels' vision, it's evident that the software development industry is on the edge of a major paradigm shift, driven by AI. This transition from AI as a mere tool to a real collaborator has profound implications for how development is approached, how teams work together, and how projects are executed. Actually, 44 % of professional developers already state they’re currently using AI in their development workflow, which means that this is something that is happening now, today. (Stack Overflow Survey 2023)
Change will happen in ways we can predict and in ways we cannot. Currently we’re seeing how some of the tedious parts of software development are being greatly facilitated by AI: writing unit tests, boilerplate code and debugging errors. Something that will be interesting to see is the change Vogel describes as blurring “the lines between product managers, front- and back-end engineers, DBAs, UI/UX designers, DevOps engineers, and architects…”. AI will provide a better understanding of complex software systems and their inner workings, which empowers people with different skillsets to better participate in a more holistic development process.
Some other important changes mr. Vogel describes are:
AI will become a great teacher
“The AI assistants on the horizon will not only understand and write code, they will be tireless collaborators and teachers…With infinite time and unlimited patience, they will support everyone on the team and contribute to everything from code reviews to product strategy.”
AI will speed things up
“Whereas before it may have taken weeks to fully grasp the downstream impacts of a code change, assistants can instantly assess modifications, summarize their effects on other parts of the system, and suggest additional changes as needed.”
AI will be able to take care of necessary, tedious but not so fun operations
“These assistants will be able to re-architect and migrate entire legacy applications, such as upgrading from Java 8 to 17, or decomposing from a monolith into microservices.”
Even if AI is becoming more powerful, this does not mean that all software developers will become unemployed. It means that the focus of the work will change and developers will be able to create more in less time. “As a result, there will be more work than ever.”, mr. Vogels states and we completely agree.
We’re living truly exiting times for the software industry, spearheading the change that AI will bring to our society.