I’ve Been a Software Developer for 15 Years. AI Is Turning Us All Into IKEA

Then IKEA came along and revolutionised the whole shopping experience for furniture. They made it fun with that slow maze that ran you through beautifully decorated show rooms which would inspire and dazzle. They brought food into the mix too which has turned into it’s own thing altogether. They made the whole experience so much better.

They made instructions for building furniture easy to follow. Their furniture actually looked good, functioned well and was nice and affordable.

They brought this to the masses. It was available to everyone. They made having good looking furniture “easy and cheap”.

I would argue that AI is now doing to software what IKEA did for furniture. They are making it “easy and cheap” to build good-looking software. On the one hand this is great, on the other though there is a sinister dark side lurking.

Software’s Evolution

The building of software has evolved dramatically over time. If we look back to when to when computers were first introduced, it required lots of money, big machines, and specialists to be able to create any kind of computer programme.

As this industry evolved, programming languages started to be created, which abstracted things to a higher level.

The entry level into software became lower and lower.

I started in software some 15 years ago, which was when the internet was really turning into something. The internet made the entry level even easier, as articles, video tutorials, and many other online resources made the world of software and programming accessible to even more people.

Therefore, one could argue that AI is just another step along this line of evolution. It again lowers the entry level into building software. This is a good thing as the more people who are able to create software, the better, right?

This is where things for me become a bit grey and cloudy. I’ve can see both the positive side of AI and the negative side.

The Positive Side Of AI Producing Software

IKEA brought good looking furniture to the masses. This improved the standard of living for many people around the world. AI is bringing software development to the masses.

I work with people who are not traditionally programmers. They do however understand logic. They are able to build out MVPs and make their ideas become fully functioning applications thanks to AI. They are empowered by AI and I would argue this is a good thing.

When one looks into the code, the code isn’t the greatest obviously. No best practices are followed, the code lacks any kind of structure, scaling and the maintenance of this software would be difficult, to say the least. There are definitely problems.

The building of software is no longer restricted to the specialist programmer.

The Darker Side Of AI Producing Software

AI is complicated. As I think many developers have realised over the last few years, how you use AI very much dictates the results you get. The prompts you use, the md files you have in your repo, the context you provide, the size of the request — all these things contribute to the results you see from AI.

This basically boils down to: “If you know what you’re doing, AI is an incredibly powerful resource. If you don’t, you’re putting enormous trust into AI leading you along the right path.”

I would argue that non programmers who use AI to write software don’t know what they’re doing. They are going to rely on AI heavily to lead the way.

If you look on Airbnb nowadays, you can see a very common design pattern that’s used with very neutral colours, whites, beiges, and a very minimal layout. The furniture is almost always from IKEA. You look at different homes and different apartments, and 90% of them all look exactly the same.

This is going to happen to software as AI usage grows.

Over time, as more and more non programming people use and rely on AI, they will tend towards producing very similar things all produced by AI. Everything is tending towards a mean. Everything is going to end up looking and functioning very much the same.

Don’t get me wrong, these pieces of software will all be very good and functioning, but they will just be almost identical. It will make the whole environment, the whole industry, very bland and sterile.

Why? Because just like IKEA — it’s “cheap and easy” and if there is one thing we know about humans, they always tend towards the “cheap and easy”.

A Shred Of Hope

The one shred of hope I am currently holding onto is even in the furniture world there is still demand for custom made products. When 90% of homes look the same, there are people out there who want to be different. They don’t want to look and behave like everyone else and they go out of there way to produce something unique.

These are the same type of people that we are going to be relying on in the future in software. As the masses fall back on the crutch of using AI to do their work and produce their software, we will more and more need individuals who think a little differently and produce custom, beautiful and innovative software to continue to lead the way.

Conclusion

If we’re not careful, we’re going to get into a position where we have a world full of good-looking, well-functioning software which at the same time is bland, sterile and lacks any innovation.

There will be no diversity, and if evolution has taught us anything, it is that things flourish in diversity. This will be something that individuals will have to actively seek out. They will have to choose the less trodden path in order to push the world of software forward.

AI is changing things and there is no putting the genie back into the bottle. But for all the productivity gains and speed we are experiencing, there will be downsides and we should be very aware of them. For me blandness and conformity are the more sinister ones we have to look out for.

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