The near future of software development is a a huge question mark at the moment. Nobody actually knows what the industry will look like in 5 years time, let alone 10+. Going into a CS degree now is definitely risky, there is a good chance that anything you learn in a current software course will not be practically relevant for software engineering jobs in 5 years.

I think personally I would look at other career prospects for now and engage with software development as a personal hobby/interest, you can always look at getting into the software industry later on once the state of it has stabilised and you know what you’re getting into.

I’m a technical lead for an AI-based startup and enthusiast about AI. I’ve been in software development for about 30 years. I’m responsible for making sure my teams use AI in their development process and enabling them and measuring the results. So from the perspective of your average lemming, I am biased towards AI and all of the terrible things it heralds, and probably literally Satan. I want you to keep that perspective in mind as you read my thoughts.

AI can create simple applications well. Of there is a tedious part of your job that takes time and focus away from your key job duties, AI can probably write a Python script to automate that for you.

The capabilities of AI are continuing to expand through breaking your ask up into multiple smaller tasks and executing them and verifying the output. However the ability of AI is growing at a smaller exponent than the cost. AI is not sustainable currently. At some point, the true cost of all the data center construction, hardware, electricity, etc will have to be passed on to customers and AI development projects will become vastly more expensive.

AI doesn’t think and doesn’t learn (though RAG pipelines can make it more effective) which means it can’t learn through failure. The number of times it has led me in a circle because it doesn’t know how to fix something and keeps trying different things until it has spent $10-20 in tokens just to reinvent the original problem is high.

The hardest parts of development aren’t working the code. The hardest parts are translating requirements into code. Identifying and reasoning about edge cases. Planning and architecting. Identifying design tradeoffs and recommending / picking the right one. Coordinating with stakeholders.

AI can help with those tasks but it can’t do those tasks. AI might slightly reduce the number of CSEs in the world a bit, but it will never, ever replace a significant number of us. It can’t. The code it produces sucks without knowledgeable human guidance.

My teams are seeing a 10-12% self-reported productivity gain (or will take a few months before we have verifiable velocity management so take that with a grain of salt). We are aspiring to maybe 25% productivity gains on greenfield development. But to be honest that’s the company line. I’m hopeful but skeptical we will see even that. I use AI every day and it is helpful in lots of ways, but you have to recognize when it’s going off the rails or doing the wrong thing.

I’m actually in the middle of reviewing a draft acceptance criteria for a project I’m leading. It read all of the technical requirements and diagrams. It missed a bunch of stuff, got a bunch of stuff wrong, and most of what’s left is not written for the right audience — this should be a product owner document that doesn’t require examining code or databases to determine success, but because much of what we have is technical documentation, that’s what it wrote everywhere.

I know this is getting long, but I want you to understand CSE jobs aren’t going anywhere for a bunch of reasons. It remains a great field. There is likely to be some pain in the industry over the next few years as CEOs learn we cannot be replaced so easily, but if you are just getting started, I have a feeling you might enter the market on the other side of that just as there is a big hiring boom as they realize they’ve fucked up.

Good luck!

We are already 3 years into ‘in 3 months AI will replace all programmers’.
The only reason why there is even such a big AI hype in CS in the first place is the nearly endless demand for software. It does not matter how horrible your software is, as long as it kind of does something, there is a demand for it. And all AI can do is satisfy this “demand” for small scale, broken and unmaintainable software. Everything that is a bit more sofisticated needs a human software developer.

Will this change in 7 years? Maybe, but not because of the current AIs since they have plateuaued. All we do is increase training massively or let the models run on stronger/more hardware for “better” results. Both of these ways increase costs massively but “result” improvements are marginal.

So unless there is a big new technological discovery, which can happen in any field at any time, AI will not replace software development jobs.

If AI is coming to take CS the other jobs are even more at risk.

Honestly Ive heard this rhetoric the last 20 years in software development. AI is just the latest fad. Before it was some sort of language that was going to make developing software obsolete. I remember specifically people said that about web dev and wordpress. Its still a thing, theres just MORE. More software in the world now being made with more entities. Even if AI gets better, CS can transition into IT, network security, etc…etc… theres a ton there.

Maybe having a frank discussion with your parents would be in order. Worst case, check to see if you can get other ways of funding your education.

I always try to cross the terrain that my competition won’t. To be fearful when they are greedy and greedy when they are fearful.

Right now tech has bad prospects and every other college student’s parents are saying the same thing as yours.

The truth is that LLMs are great for shallow, simple work that’s been done before. It’s dangerously imprecise so not wise to use for medical, banking, aerospace, finance, STEM. If X fails to load some feeds, who cares, but if a laser eye surgery machine isn’t 100% correct it’s not shipping.

So this isn’t advice, just a framework that guides my decisions. I’m planning to keep doing this career until retirement unless something else changes.

I’ve spent the last year job searching and I’ve been made to feel like my degree isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. I’ve applied to hundreds of openings that claim to be entry level, only to get the same form letter back telling me they’ve decided to go with a more qualified applicant. Haven’t even landed a single interview. Feels like I can’t get experience because I don’t have experience.

I won’t tell you not to pursue your passion, I got my degree in CS because I sincerely enjoy programming. But do be aware that the job market is hell right now, and it may only get worse.

Other comments are right that AI shouldn’t be replacing programmers, but they aren’t really answering the question of whether you can get a job. It’s not that AI will completely replace all programmers, but employers do seem to think they don’t need entry-level roles anymore, and the supply of fresh grads outpaces the demand of job openings. If all you have is a degree and nothing else, you’ll have a very hard time getting a foot in the door.

My best advice I can offer is to get at least one internship under your belt before you graduate. Most internship positions explicitly say they’re only for current students, so you have a limited time to get something you can put on your resume. I feel like that was my mistake and now it’s too late for me.

I’m not an expert on AI, but I do have a degree in CS and have worked at a job related to CS for around five years now.

From what I know, I think probably most jobs in CS are not going to be replaced because AI has some fundamental shortcomings compared to a human in terms of long-term planning and creativity, among others, and it doesn’t seem like that shortcoming is going to be solved any time soon (maybe things will be different in another 20 years, but I have no confidence in predicting technology that far out). AI can make a simple website, but it can’t do a lot of the art required for game dev, nor can it make the right decisions required for making a large, stable application. It has its uses, but it’s not all-powerful, nor can it do everything, especially without people to tweak things and act as guard-rails.

That said, the job market is not great right now, and from what I’ve heard, the CS job market has been especially bad since Covid ended and the demand for online services went down because people were able to go outside again. I would assume things would be more stable 7 years from now, but who knows? I would be very surprised if the current CS job slump lasted that long (since it’s already been ongoing for a while), but it’s entirely possible that something else will come up in that time.

If by cyber, you mean cybersecurity, then you could probably get a job doing that (governments tend to hire a lot of people interested in cybersecurity, and they have a lot of extra scholarship opportunities), but you might not be programming as much. Depending on your interests, that may or may not be a dealbreaker.

Not sure that I could do much to help convince your parents if that’s their current take on AI, but if AI is so good, wouldn’t it be valuable to learn how to make an AI yourself and/or work for an AI company? I know someone who dual majored in Math and CS, who learned enough in college to be able to create an LLM from scratch, so it’s not impossible to learn in school if you take the right elective classes.

Either way, hopefully my advice is helpful to you.

I wish people would stop treating college like job training. Study what you’re most passionate about and interested in. Study whatever you would not regret studying, even if you never got a job related to that thing. Without “networking” I do think it will be very hard to find your first job related to CS for the foreseeable future (it’s been like that before as well).

You have two paths from my perspective.

The one with less chance of success: convince them:

Look up tech developments from the youth time of your parents.

I’ve been through a couple of decades by now and yes, jobs vanish - but rarely instantly and rarely without a very VERY clear shift.

My parents for example still saw people lighting the gas lights in the streets when they were young. But gas lights vanished more and more, its clear that this job will be gone.

The job as driver is “dead” since oder a decade by now and lorry drivers are searched more today than in the last two years where I’m at.

But most likely you won’t convince them with “you’re wrong”. Instead you can go a different route: CS not as “programmer” but as “master of the machine the people who will make other people’s job obsolete”. The ones who understand the magic of the silicone rock.

In short: you’re not studying to become a programmer like so many other fools, you’re studying to make them obsolete, to be the part of the future who’s coming out on top.

The coal industry was dying but the smart ones jumped onto oil, or some other bullshit like it. In short: figure out what your parents believe the future will look like and spotlight the CS part in their world view. Change your own perspective to whatever theirs is, make them feel understood and seen - and he’ll them from this viewport to see why it’s the right choice for you.

Keep in mind that they’re doing this because they care for you! Never forget that :)

Do real engineering. EE, ME, CpE, AE. If you want to write code, any of these have code heavy tracks.

CS will go in a several different directions:

• Some will be over AI agents to make high value, low risk things
• Some will be after AI agents to trouble shoot and repair
• Some will build stuff completely without AI just cause

There’s gonna be room for all of those in industry. Companies are gonna move away from large scale general solutions and expect boutique in house software that does exactly what they need to be developed with the help of AI and others are gonna expect human maintenance in legacy languages.

The trades will always be available, but so will developers–it’s the balance of expectations and the tools we use that are changing–same as always.

Personally, I hate it. I still do my development by hand, though I’ve had to learn to use the tools for compliance.

In seven years, the world will long for people who can still program to fix the stuff “AI” cooked up.

What degree would you get if not CS? Are there other areas in tertiary education that you’re passionate about? The fact is, in my mind, this boils down to your parent attempting to make a major life decision for you based on something they aren’t necessarily qualified to know (are they in CS/AI?). Would you be cool working a field you don’t like for the remainder of your life based on that?

AI will at least disrupt the sector long term somewhat I think but as someone working in networking (non-CS grad, for now) who uses it somewhat for my job, I’m less than impressed. I get people have vibe coded neat projects with it but of the 4 main AIs I used, only one gave me half acceptable results for a small web applet of pretty small scope written in js. If I had to put it in production, get it useable and secure enough for others to use? Forget it. Now if I had a CS degree or at least more experience with C++, I could maybe get something half useable done.

People shit on AI, for good reason, it has its uses imo but I’m still doubtful the singularity is just around the corner that tech bros are trying to convince everyone of in order to sell their wares.

Also, go to your prospective uni, go to the CS/Electrical Engineering faculty and ask to talk to an advisor and ask these questions of them. Most unis also have future student/career advising services.

Nobody has the answer I’m afraid, we’ll have to see. Currently at least you need a human professional to review what the LLMs do, no way of telling if that will change. Although, I don’t think it’s likely that code generation tools will become fully self sustainable.

My best guess is that there’ll always be a place for qualified, deeply curious people in the field… If not, a lot more than programming is gonna become automated, and well… Society is gonna have bigger problems.

I’d recommend prioritising rational thinking & problem solving (those are severe limitations of LLMs today) and if all else fails, possibly a hobby that you might somehow fall back on for employment in a post knowledge-work economy.

Too tired to explain but: have you ever thought of another major if any. It’s not a judgment of anything or a piece of advice.