Before we had machines to do computations, we had human computers—people who sat and calculated long, complex calculations. When computers, as we understand them today, made an appearance, their profession drastically changed.

This was hardly the first time and certainly not the last time an innovation disrupted a profession. However, this disruption gave birth to the concept of the programmer, which evolved and was later rebranded as the software developer.

During the last 70 years, building software has drastically changed, and with that, the profession of the software developer has changed. We are about to change again with the emergence of generative AI and other tools. What is the next step for our profession? What will and won't be possible, and where do we need to position ourselves to keep making meaningful contributions?

In this talk, we go through the history of software development as a profession; we look at some of the major paradigm shifts that have happened historically and dig deep into what it means to be a software developer. Lastly, we look at the implications the emergence of generative AI might have on our profession and what we need to do to embrace this change fully.