for humanity, the increase in productivity is progress
i'm not saying it's bad, i'm saying it has consequences
Did all of that free code reduce demand for developers? If not, why not?
the anwser is yes, while in the meantime, the expansion of the industry offset the surplus of developers.
More effective developers results in more demand for custom software, resulting in more jobs for developers.
My hope is that AI-assisted programming will have similar results.
I don't really know myself, but I think there's a decent change that most developer jobs will actually disappear. Your argument isn't wrong, but when we're nearing (though still far from) the state where all productive tech work can be handled by LLMs. Once it can effectively and correctly fix bugs and add new well-defined features to a real codebase, things start to look very different for most developers.
this is exactly the problem
The more productivity AI brings to workers, the fewer employees employers need to hire, the less salary employers need to pay, and the less money workers have for consumption.
capitalist mode of production