You call yourself a Software Gardener. What does it mean?
— I found this metaphor years ago in the first edition of a fabulous book, The Pragmatic Programmer, by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. There’s a concept of a Software Gardener—a programmer who sees and treats working on IT systems pretty much like working in a garden. There are new seasons, there is choosing the best tools for the job, there are different crops, there are bugs (to get rid of), there are times of hard work and harvesting, there are dead seasons… As someone who tries to have a holistic view of an IT system, I was struck by the accuracy of this metaphor, and since then, I have used it to label myself and quickly explain my views when it comes to creating and maintaining software products. The fact that I was born in a farming family only helps, I guess.
How do you foresee AI impacting the roles of programmers?
— I wish I knew this myself! I hear that these days landing the first job is more difficult than a few years ago, because “we can replace interns and juniors with AI”.
In the short term, this might be true and have a positive impact on quarterly reports. However, older people will retire one day or another. Who will replace them then?
In my opinion, it's time for the adepts to stop thinking about programming the way their older colleagues did. I've seen coding agents solving coding challenges faster and faster; their accuracy is oftentimes acceptable, and they can also “comprehend” the documentation much quicker than most, if not all, humans. So competing with AI in such tasks is futile.
What matters are skills, where we, humans, are still much better at: communication (e.g., “extracting” requirements from future users, identifying self-contradictory use cases), understanding a concept once and for all (instead of being explained over and over, or re-trained), self-improvements (stateless models can't improve themselves), and so on.
Which IT professions are at the highest risk of becoming obsolete due to AI automation and innovation?
— I’m pretty sure which professionals are most likely to lose their jobs: the ones who decided to ignore modern AI or deny its existence, just like children playing hide-and-seek who put only their heads under the pillow: ‘You can’t see me, because I don’t see you!’
People who don’t want or can’t use AI might not lose the job to AI itself, but to the person who wants and can use AI for faster and better results.
How is tech education changing with the rise of AI technologies? Do you think higher education is still essential for aspiring programmers?
— Even when I was graduating from my university, some people were so good at understanding IT systems and products that they didn’t need any formal education. Today, when you can easily use AI-based tools to aid you, it might be needed even less.
However, there’s also education and education. The key decision is to spend your time and money on education that is actually helpful: squeeze every day and every euro. Learn principles, not tools, and develop critical thinking, rather than memorizing. If the university can help here, that’s great. If it’s just for a diploma, I wouldn’t bother myself.
Besides AI, what are some of the most interesting technology trends you observe in modern programming and the IT market?
— One trend I see, which actually bothers me, is programmers relying more and more on tools and frameworks. Don’t get me wrong, these frameworks are great most of the time, where they fit. When you see your framework, your data store, your cloud provider as a silver bullet, and literally every task you can address looks like a shooting target, something somewhere went wrong. Seriously, do we really need Domain-Driven Design, Hexagonal Architecture, and a behemoth framework just to run a simple network proxy?
Traditionally, technical roles were siloed, with distinct responsibilities assigned to frontend developers, backend developers, designers, and researchers. Today, hybrid roles are more common. Do you feel this shift yourself?
— The problem of being siloed is that it naturally impairs your vision, and you see the world through a spotting scope: sure, you see many details, but in a very narrow field, sometimes even as an isolated island being the centre of the world. I think becoming T-shaped is more and more important than it used to be: you don’t have to excel every time in frontend, backend, database, testing, and ops combined, but it’s crucial to at least comprehend how they work, what’s doable, what’s not, and what the costs and impacts of a specific approach are.
I’d even say that these days the domain for this T-shape is wider and broader, but not in technology. It really helps if you see stuff through product, UX, financial, and even marketing lenses!
Where do you see the future of programming heading over the next 5 to 10 years?
— I guess not everything will revolve around AI.
Today, many organisations, startups, and big tech alike, prove that AI is undoubtedly great at one thing: burning money and resources.
Long-term, these applications of AI must bring value; people will need to see them as useful, not appalling. (Do you know a single person who wants to talk to an AI agent instead of a person, when things really go South? Exactly!) Investors must view them as an investment as well.
The key question (which I can’t answer) is: will we see a breakthrough change that significantly improves AI in general, allowing investments to benefit at least linearly?
What role does Poland play in the international IT market today, and how do you think its position will evolve in the future?
— Poland undoubtedly has many skilled IT engineers (and other professions too), which is the result of our education system and work culture. Despite this, I don't see many systems and innovations that might be considered globally successful. We have IT solutions which my IT friends from other EU countries simply admire and are jealous of: BLIK, mObywatel, InPost, Allegro, etc. However, we could have more. I also wish our tax system and administration could become more straightforward and predictable. Without this, and more product- and solution-oriented thinking around investments, becoming a global or even a regional IT power might be needlessly difficult to achieve.
