I think a product like GithubNext Spark [1] that can handle deployment, SSO, databases, uploads, etc with an LLM fine tuned on the managed runtime API will be a very productive tool. It already works surprisingly well in my experience although it’s an mvp and they havent fleshed out database stuff yet. Kind of like a higher code Retool that can still be used by non-programmers.
The original dream of Web Services and SOA.
I work at a small business and understand the entire system as a whole.
Most the complexity we have is in the UI so non-technical people can interact and work with company data/databases. Our SaaS is really the same thing but stuff we didn't want to build in house. There is no rocket science being done here.
At some level of AI accuracy though it would seem like there would be a phase transition that most of this UI goes away along with the need for many of the employees.
Right now there is no risk of this happening but at some level of accuracy we go from 200 people to like 20 with the only future head count coming in sales. Most likely though I would expect a competitor to eat our lunch in the phase transition and we go from 200 to zero.
Pushing 50 here, I am trying to think right now of my AI hedge/career change to something more creative/artistic that being a human itself has value. I managed to avoid working in a factory like my father by being a shitty computer but there might be no market for shitty human computers in 10 years.
Like Simon’s quote above says, software is a competitive advantage so when one company develops software that makes them more efficient or grows revenue, competitors have to follow suit or get left behind. It’s an economic arms race. That’s why the dreaded outsourcing wave of the 2000s never materialized: companies ended up hiring a bunch more software engineers in the US and outsourced a bunch of other engineering to India and other countries.
The interesting question is how this will interact with current interest rates and the end of ZIRP.