AI coding agents will make software disposable, like fast fashion replaced tailored clothing, creating demand for more programmers, not fewer.

Just like fast fashion replaced tailors with factory workers and machine operators, fast software will replace programmers with AI operators. And the market will demand many of them. Many more than large software companies employ today.

The new world will need more programmers (AI operators) than it needs now. Because the demand for custom software will soon start growing. Everyone will want their own Photoshop. Every developer will want their own IDE and their own Linux. And they will throw them away without hesitation. Just like I throw away my shoes every year and get new ones.

I share this here to see what are your thoughts on this.

  • moto
    3·
    4 hours ago

    The author is supposedly fairly experienced. Which makes this take really baffling.

    When someone needs an IDE with new language support, they won’t wait for JetBrains to release it next year, maybe. They will go to a software shop around the corner, pay a few hundred bucks, and get it next Monday. When someone needs a new feature in Photoshop, they won’t wait for Adobe. They will buy a new Photoshop from a friend, with the feature and maybe a few more. When a company needs their accounting system to support a new logistics optimization scheme, they won’t go to Oracle. They will re-write the entire Oracle Fusion, for a few thousand dollars.

    No company in their right mind is going to want to constantly throw away and switch software like shoes. There’s a reason companies employ tons of customer success people to help with migrating and onboarding. It is painful to migrate a tool over.

    Also what happens with the shoe model when the customer forgot a few requirements, do you pay for the new disposable software again? Do you keep regenerating new software every time you forget a thing you need to support? And that’s assuming a small company with an easy install process. What about a large company where you have to roll this out to multiple machines at any given time?

    Okay cool you pay for a web app instead so its easier to distribute. Where are you housing your disposable app? You wanna manage an AWS account yourself and manage the scaling and infra?

    People don’t pay SaaS companies for functionality itself.

    But all of that assumes that AI can perfectly replicate every aspect of different software. Which there’s no context window in the world that will support that. It reeks of the same “Docusign is gonna be vibecoded away vibe”. You don’t pay docusign for an interface to type your name in. You pay them to stay on top of regulatory compliance with document signatures and support various different integrations with your other tools that you have.