Worth noting that the BLS has very different numbers for "software developers" vs "programmers" despite them often being interchangable in common parlence: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm

@ElliotDavies 1.7m working in software development vs 0.14 for programming, also expecting 25% growth for software development vs 11% decline for programming

That's a pretty big change from January to now. What changed?

@Nikos I'll reveal why I bet the market from 80 to 20. Here's the graph of programmers over time:

You can see the number of programmers has fallen ever since ChatGPT came out in 1998.

@ducat Woah! That is not what I expected! Thanks for sharing.

@ducat Lmao!

@ducat Where is your data from?

@ElliotDavies https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm

I downloaded each national XLS file listed here

@ducat It’s very unintitive to me that there was more programmers in 2000 than there was in 2008. It’s also a little strange that the BLS is projecting a 10% decline when your graph looks much worse than that.

@ducat This random blogpost I found shared the same concern: https://computinged.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/how-many-programmers-are-there-from-the-computer-boys-take-over/

Since the exact profession of computer programmer is much more fine grained now it’s likely more people will work with programming - but not under the definition found at BLS.

The bureau of labor already believes compute programmers will be 11% less common in 2032 than in 2022.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-programmers.htm

@Vorak Unless their estimates dramatically updated in the past 1-2 years since generative AI (code and otherwise) swept the planet, I don't put much stock in them.

Basis of my YES votes is to some large extent this: