In a world driven by AI, software developers won't become obsolete—in fact, companies will need them more than ever. Our CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar sat down for a chat with the OpenAI Forum on the possibilities that AI is creating for companies and software developers, its infinite need for new code, and how Stack Overflow is evolving while supporting enterprise AI initiatives with Stack Internal. Watch the full recording of his conversation with OpenAI's Head of Developer Experience Romain Huet:
This is true — developers won’t disappear. But the type of development and the economics around it are about to change completely. In the next 2–3 years, AI will be building full applications and entire websites end-to-end. Not mockups. Not prototypes. Fully functional apps with backend logic, APIs, auth, databases, and frontend UI — all generated, deployed, and iterated by AI agents. And when that becomes mainstream, the cost structure of software development is going to collapse. A project that costs $50K today will realistically cost $3K–$10K within a couple of years. Not because developers aren’t needed, but because: - AI will handle 80–90% of the repetitive work - Devs will shift to supervising, architecting, and troubleshooting - Delivery timelines will shrink from months to days - Developers won’t be obsolete — but the era of huge development bills for standard apps is ending fast. The companies that adapt to that shift will win. The ones who don’t will be wondering why their competitors are shipping entire platforms in a weekend.
So true Prashanth! When you have innovation at every level of the IT stack, despite the optimization ways, there is and will be heightened demand for developers. The skill sets may changes but the demand grows.