Many recent articles deal with digital transformation and how it will change and affect different professions and jobs.
The replacement of man’s functions with hardware + software has always been a reality, in some periods with greater significance than in others, and it is a fact that it will continue to happen in times to come.
For example I share the main ideas behind the article
Why robots will replace developers, but I disagree with the title -- for me robots will
transform developers.
The success of this kind of news, posts, and articles is that, in general, they convey fears; and fear often spurs action. Fear is part of every industry where technology arrives bringing along its transformations.
The industry that is home to Mickey Mouse has been, for some time now, experiencing such fears. The beginning of the end of that industry as everyone knew it –carried forward by several companies and individuals– reached its highest point in the year 1995 with “Toy Story”, the first feature film by Pixar (including Steve Jobs), which was published by Disney.
But most arguments and fears vanish once the new reality proves better, in many aspects, than the reality preceding it.
The obvious changes undergone in relation to the work and skills necessary for avant-garde computer animation have also brought along endless opportunities never heard of before in this industry.
An example is the possibility of fully exploiting the creativity of those used to manual drawing, who are now free from the tedious task of having to take so many elements from one frame to the next.
Even when companies like Disney express that manually made feature films are not in their plans, many of the pieces already produced do include components developed manually, as part of the creation process. I am certain that, just as it happened in the animation industry, this will also take place in many of the industries currently experiencing digital transformation.
Digital transformation will hardly replace aspects such as business know-how, creativity, people skills, or the capability of abstract thinking. Though many changes will indeed take place, I support the idea that the theory on the
Complexity of value will prove that there will always be a space for human contributions.
The software industry in particular is one that should improve productivity and quality of the products it creates.
GeneXus represents our intent to conceal complexity in order to leverage the skill of those with expertise in the business, or those who have creative ideas and want to materialize them without worrying about complex aspects that contribute nothing to the objective sought.
Since 1988 we have been working on the idea of robots writing software, and today it is a reality -- there is no human being that can write in a reasonable time the software that GeneXus can write automatically in minutes.
In more than 20 years since we started, GeneXus has transformed many developers into analysts and wrote millions of line of code automatically.