Coding, as a profession, will be strongly affected in the next 5 years.
The shift from writing code to directing AI.
When you analyze which industries will be most affected by artificial intelligence, coding stands out as a controversial case. Will coding be eliminated or just heavily affected by AI? It's complicated because artificial intelligence is basically code itself, so it seems to need someone to navigate through it — a chicken or egg situation.
But some claim this isn't necessarily true — that nowadays companies can run entirely without human coders. The growth of "vibe coding," which is the ability to code an entire project using artificial intelligence tools like GPT and Claude, is proving them somewhat right.
The Economics of Development Are Changing
I work in business analysis, and many companies approach me to help them raise funding for their startups. Traditionally, a huge chunk of this fundraising goes to product development. MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) were not easily attained without a talented human coder, or at least an average one.
This is what AI tools now strongly provide: average coding capabilities. With the growth of AI agents — essentially GPT or Claude working 24/7 — this capability becomes even stronger. We might be heading toward a world without the job we know today as "human coder." It could transform into something like a "human AI navigator" — someone who knows how to prompt properly, look at high-level code, or flowchart a project, but doesn't necessarily handle the execution of coding.
The Historical Pattern of Job Evolution
This pattern makes sense historically. There used to be people who programmed television shows manually. There used to be elevator operators. There have always been people performing executional skills that eventually became automated.
When you dig into the deep job of coding, you'll see that a significant portion is executional and repetitive. You know how to write a line of code. You know what syntax errors to avoid. You know how to write a loop. You know how to debug. All these executional tasks take a good chunk of time — and this is what will be extremely affected, not even in the long term, but in the short term.
The Disruption Is Already Happening
So yes, coding is about to be disrupted by AI tools — if it isn't already being disrupted. I'd love to speak to a coding agency and see whether they've started to notice a decline in growth or project requests. Because if they don't decrease their pricing, others will.
If you previously had to pay $20,000 for an MVP (which I personally did — I paid around $15,000 to build an MVP), that same product can now be coded in a few months with Claude at almost the same quality. As a result, the agency I approached might go out of business if they don't adapt.
The Rise of AI Coding Agencies
"Vibe coders" are definitely going to rise. You'll more frequently see people offering to create an MVP through AI agents. They'll take requirements from you, feed them to their agent, and let the agent work 24/7 to deliver in 1/10 of the time with 1/10 of the budget.
Eventually, it could just be an online software development agency that is entirely AI-powered, which is what GPT is essentially trying to do with agents. You can just tell ChatGPT to build the app you want, and depending on the level of sophistication, it's entirely doable.
Navigating the Future
So yes, when it comes to short-term effects, coding is one of the professions that will show impact in the short term. The only way to navigate through these impacts is to learn how to use AI effectively — to learn prompting, to learn how to increase your capabilities as a coder rather than fight artificial intelligence tools in a battle that is destined to be lost.
It is smarter to start using them for your benefit now.