Why Is Demand for Software Coders Still Rising?

One panelist says coding assistants opened a new category of bespoke software, and demand for coders is rising even though coding assistants write 95% of the code.

Software used to get built only when a large customer base could pay for it. Photoshop worked because many graphic designers needed the same product. Enterprises can now build software for one internal use case, and agents are bespoke programs for a particular task. The amount of code being created is already orders of magnitude bigger than before coding assistants. Companies that never would have been software companies are hiring coders to manage the work.

Predictors of the jobs apocalypse said software coders would be the first category eliminated. Everybody became a developer and started shipping code. The remaining 5% is a slice of a much bigger pie, and someone somewhat technical still has to look under the hood, manage the process, and maintain the software.