Software engineers may have to develop other skills soon as artificial intelligence takes over many coding tasks.
That’s according to Amazon Web Services’ CEO, Matt Garman, who shared his thoughts on the topic during an internal fireside chat held in June, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by Business Insider.
“If you go forward 24 months from now, or some amount of time — I can’t exactly predict where it is — it’s possible that most developers are not coding,” said Garman, who became AWS’s CEO in June.
“Coding is just kind of like the language that we talk to computers. It’s not necessarily the skill in and of itself,” the executive said. “The skill in and of itself is like, how do I innovate? How do I go build something that’s interesting for my end users to use?”
This means the job of a software developer will change, Garman said.
“It just means that each of us has to get more in tune with what our customers need and what the actual end thing is that we’re going to try to go build, because that’s going to be more and more of what the work is as opposed to sitting down and actually writing code,” he said.
“English language proficient isn’t really a skill its just the language we talk to each other in. There’s not necessarily skill in being able to form a cogent thought and articulate it clearly to your audience. This is why JFK’s ‘ask not what your country can do for you’ speech is equal to Gucci Gang song lyrics.”