Generative AI — Flattening the Software Development Life Cycle | by Dennis Layton | Apr, 2024

April 22, 2024

34 1 minute read

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For some time, I have wanted to write about this topic because I don’t see anyone else addressing this question:

If we augment software development with generative AI, what kind of productivity should we expect, and where will the greatest impact be?

The adoption of generative AI to augment software development requires us to re-examine how we estimate time and effort needed, as much of the programming code can now be written by generative AI.

I asked Claude-Opus and GPT-4 to estimate how many lines of code are being written every year. Considering that 2024 could mark the last year where commercial software is largely done by humans, I’d like you all to think about this.

The abbreviated response from Claude-Opus is as follows:

According to a report by IDC, there were approximately 26.4 million professional software developers worldwide in 2019, and this number is expected to reach 28.7 million by 2024.

To estimate the total number of lines of code written annually, Claude-Opus suggested multiplying the projected number of software developers by the average daily output per developer.