The only constant in life is change.
– Heraclitus
I’m a software engineer.
It means that I use computers on a daily basis to make a living.
I build programs on computers for other people so that they can use those programs on their computers.
“Pfft, why are you telling me this? Do I look like I’m from another planet? I know what computers are. I know what a software engineer does.”
But here’s the thing, computers didn’t mean the same thing as they do now.
According to Wikipedia, ‘computer’ used to be a job:
“The term ‘computer’, in use from the early 17th century, meant ‘one who computes’: a person performing mathematical calculations.”
(Side note: Most computers back then were women.)
Think of the time before the first computers, I’m referring to the machines.
Most people had physical jobs.
Everybody used cash.
People wrote with pens and pencils on paper.
They used to send each other physical mails.
Fast forward to today.
Most people’s job has something to do with computers.
Nobody carries cash anymore.
The last time I used a pen was an Apple pencil to draw something on my iPad.
Everyone communicates through emails and text messages over the internet, using, guess what, computers.
One of my musings is reading about the history of ordinary people living ordinary lives.
It’s always fascinating to hear older people talk about how they used to live and compare it with the life we have now.
It helps put things in perspective.
For instance, read what office jobs looked like before computers, or how people reacted to the first computers.
Now imagine what life will be like for people 10 years from now with this new wave of generative AI and all the tools and services enabling people to create and build extraordinarily faster than before.
Whether you like it or not, the definition of a software engineer is going to change.
It’s just, inevitable.
Today, ‘software engineer’ is a job, but probably in a few years, it may be an agent you interact with, it will be a software you will need to operate, just like computers nowadays.
This may sound discouraging at first, “Oh wait, does that mean I’m going to lose my job? That sounds so stressful.”
In hindsight, the best person to operate a software engineer agent is you, a software engineer.
You know how your problem-solver mind works.
You have broken down tasks into smaller components many, many times.
You have envisioned whole applications and built them block by block, piece by piece, coding every line (and maybe copy-pasted from Stackoverflow every once in a while).
You are the best person to become an expert in operating a software engineer agent, because you can put yourself in its shoes, correct its mistakes, and put together the pieces it creates.
Imagine you have at your disposal a junior software engineer capable of developing any small feature with few mistakes, and at a 1000x speed.
It will work tirelessly and won’t complain.
It will deliver as long as you describe what you need precisely.
Software engineer may no longer have the same definition as it once did.
But its new definition WILL enable millions of people to build things we cannot yet imagine.
You may as well be one of those people.
You can remain the one-horsepower software engineer, or you can adapt to the new world, equip yourself with the new technologies and gain 100x more horsepower.
What I know for a fact is that nobody rides a horse to work anymore.
I made the voiceover component using Vercel’s V0 in around 30 minutes.
I also used ElevenLabs to turn this article into voice, it took one minute.
I could do all of this on my own, but it would probably take a day or two, considering the unavoidable humanly procrastination in between.
My egotistical mind used to discourage me from using all these tools.
I thought to myself: “I can do all this on my own. Why should I pay $20 a month to Vercel so that it can develop something for me that I can do myself?”
But then something funny happened.
I created a post on r/screenwriters, asking them in what ways they are leveraging ChatGPT in their writing.
In the first hour of posting, I received many downvotes, multiple hate comments, and mentions such as “Bold choice coming into a space for creatives and asking about chatgpt… I promise you that any premise ChatGPT creates could be outdone by a half-decent human writer.”
My post was removed and I was banned from that subreddit an hour later.
I was just curious to see how people in creative industries are utilizing such versatile and powerful tools.
Little did I know how defensive people can get when their own benefits are at stake.
It made me realize I was doing the same thing. I was avoiding using AI tools to my advantage because of my own fear.
I was afraid all these coding skills I learned these years have been in vain.
It’s difficult to detach from all that sunk cost.
But now is the time to allow yourself to be exposed to a new landscape, a world where humans and AI agents can coexist in harmony.