How has software development evolved as a profession and where is it going?

Before we had machines to do computations, we had human computers—people who sat and calculated long, complex calculations. When computers, as we understand them today, made an appearance, our profession drastically changed.

This was hardly the first time and certainly not the last time an innovation disrupted a profession. However, this disruption gave birth to the concept of the programmer, which evolved and was later rebranded as the software developer.

Over the last 70 years, building software has drastically changed, and with that, the profession of the software developer has changed.

We are about to change again with the emergence of generative AI and coding assistants.

What is the next step for our profession? What will and won't be possible, and where do we need to position ourselves to keep making meaningful contributions?

In this talk, we go through the history of software development as a profession; we look at some of the major changes that have happened historically and look at what it means to be a software developer today and in the upcoming years.

Lastly, we look at what impact generative AI can have on our profession and if we need and can do anything about it.

This session mainly targets Software Developers but is relevant to everyone working with the production of software. It does not require any deep technical knowledge.