Though there is hope for concerned developers,

AWS CEO Matt Garman believes AI coding tools could spell the end of the developer profession as we know it.

Some industry leaders think that in the coming years, the requirements for developer roles could change quickly due to the development of AI coding tools.

The fast evolving AI programming ecosystem may mean that “most developers are not coding” in two years, according to Matt Garman, the new CEO of AWS, who asserted that software development will undergo a fundamental transformation in the next years.

Garman told AWS staff that coding was not the only ability required of software developers, adding that “being a developer in 2025 may be different than what it was as a developer in 2020” in leaked audio that Business Insider was able to get.
Garman argued that being able to write code is not the primary skill of a skilled software developer, pointing out that the capacity to “innovate” is the key competency needed for developers.
“The ability itself is similar to asking how can I innovate? How can I create content that my end consumers will find engaging? Garman continued.

Garman’s remarks are made during a time of change for developers throughout the world. Some industry stakeholders have warned that the advent of AI coding tools will result in job layoffs in the years to come, as generative AI began to appear in late 2022.
The CEO of AWS is hardly the first well-known corporate figure in the technology industry to make similar assertions. Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, for instance, made similar forecasts earlier in the year.
Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Huang said that learning to code should no longer be the top goal for prospective developers due to the advances achieved in the field of generative AI.

Our task is to develop computing technology that eliminates the need for programming. And since everyone on the planet is now a programmer, the language of programming is human. The wonder of artificial intelligence is this, according to Huang.
At Nvidia’s GTC 2024 conference in San Jose, a month later, Huang explained his remarks, which many had taken to mean the “death of coding.” Huan stated that although many people won’t require a deep comprehension of a particular programming language, human programmers will still have a place in the industry.

“Learning to program is not a prerequisite for success, but if someone is interested in learning, please do so as we are hiring programmers,” he told the audience.
The CEO of GitLab hopes to shift the discussion on AI coding tools.

The CEO of GitLab, Sid Sijbrandij, redirected the conversation around artificial intelligence‘s place in software development, saying that he believes the topic of whether AI will eventually replace software developers is the incorrect one to be asking.
Sijbrandij stated on LinkedIn that a better place to start these conversations is with how companies can use AI to generate tangible benefits for their software development teams, citing GitLab’s ranking as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for AI coding tools.

Sijbrandij asked, “How can businesses harness the power of AI across the software development lifecycle to drive tangible business impact for customers and accelerate innovation?”

Senior product director at software design company Qt Group, Peter Schneider, told ITPro that while their clients were reporting increases in productivity in specific stages of the development lifecycle, coding tools still need to advance before businesses can start thinking about reducing their development teams.

Cross-platform application developers are telling us that using coding assistants may really increase productivity when it comes to writing code documentation and test cases. Professional developers also tell us that they enjoy utilizing general-purpose Large Language Models to provide context and examples of how to use new programming languages and their features,” the speaker added.
But there are also hints that industry-specific code is proving difficult for general purpose coding assistance to deploy. Because of this difficulty, a lot of time is spent examining code suggestions, which does not increase productivity for developing code in general.

Schneider concluded that even if generative AI coding tools significantly increase in accuracy, there are still compelling reasons to have people closely involved in the process, and he does not think they will replace human operators anytime soon.
He contended, “Unless the accuracy of coding answers supplied by models increases to within an acceptable margin of error (i.e., 98-100%), I don’t think any of these GenAI tools are likely to become substitutes for real programmers.”

“Even if GenAI does reach this margin of error, the four-eyes principle is still one of the most important mechanisms of internal risk control – in other words, any activity of significant risk like shipping software has to be reviewed and double-checked by a second, independent, and competent individual.”

Experts challenge Huang’s ‘everyone is a programmer now’ claim
Peter van der Putten, director of the AI Lab at Pegasystems and assistant professor at Leiden University, told ITPro that a good understanding of the major programming languages will be an important skill moving forward, despite the development of AI coding tools.

Van der Putten was not convinced by Huang’s argument that generative AI coding assistants mean developers will no longer need to be proficient in various languages.

He argued that without skilled coders, businesses will be left with significant amounts of technical debt generated by their automated coding tools, leaving them exposed to scores of potential vulnerabilities.

“[S]ome argue that coding assistants can unlock generation of software for non-coders such as domain experts. This will generally not work because these tools generate, well, code, so someone needs to be able to assess its validity. If you leave that to non-coders you will generate loads of technical debt, or worse unsafe, non performant or simply software that doesn’t work.”