I took it for irony, that is, accountants weren't replaced by Excel. There are thousands of articles right now of course that accountants will be replaced by AI.
Of course, but my question stands. Did all the people who used to do easily automatable clerical work remain in those roles? I presume that isn't the case, but like I say I don't really know what happened to them.
> Did all the people who used to do easily automatable clerical work remain in those roles?
My words were pretty precise. Current version of AI only works as the automatable part of programming, like writing boilerplate and implementing some algorithms already known.
Accountants still must know how to do by hand everything that their programs do and currently are mostly data entry clerks who connect proper invoices to proper accounts and verify that everything works properly. But one or maybe two times a month something is not right and then you are very glad you have an accountant or two at hand.
Similarly this will be with programmers - a lot of boilerplate and glue code will change into "implement X with library Y and output in format Z" prompts, but I think the most exciting (for me) things like actually solving problems will be left for us programmers.
I would also like to work on more fun stuff! My uncertainty is whether enough fun paid programming work will appear to fill the gap left by the automation of the boring stuff.
I think a lot of people here are more interested in questions like "how am I going to pay my mortgage in future?" rather than specifically whether the job title of "software developer" will continue to exist (which I agree it probably will).
Computers (what is a job title) were entirely replaced, but they were already on their way out for decades. The people on that job migrated up or down into programming and office assistance. Eventually (way into the 90s) the number of office assistants declined.
Accountants are the only folks with the knowledge and skills to actually use the tools correctly that were to supposedly replace accountants... ;)
(Much the same as programmers will be replaced by "A.I." ... They won't as long as they educate themselves on proper use of the tools available to them. It'll likely someday be like the "Star Trek" computers, but even they still needed folks with the technical skills to use those computers well / properly.)
