AI replaces software programmers and composers, yet?

After three years of AI revolution, I still believe that major technological revolutions create jobs and businesses. They don’t create unemployment. The invention of the plow didn’t put gatherers out of work. The printing press sparked a phenomenal boom in the book industry and jobs: printing houses, publishers, libraries, writers, translators.

AI won’t lead to the disappearance of software and technology companies either. It will multiply them. 

(Rant triggered by very cool discussions with Vlad Coroama, Mihai Amariutei, Alexander Kruel).

As for how much software programming will actually change, I have reservations. 

I first said it 25 years ago: Software developers are cheap, and replaceable. But software is much more than that. We need architects and engineers; not coders. We need people who understand mathematics, algorithms, data, patterns, design, methodology. "Writing code" is a low-level job, and requires low-level qualifications.

This is even more true today - when AI replaces more and more low-level jobs.

But:

DOES AI REPLACE REAL DEVELOPERS?

=> NO.

We write code every day, at Hermix. With AI. 

From our experience, AI isn’t miraculous, yet. Surely it helps. But it doesn’t replace us - it just helps us. It is a fast, limited assistant.

SO WHAT ABOUT ALL THE STORIES ABOUT VIBE CODING?

Every day, we read about a new AI agent writing an entire application from scratch. 

An AI agent wrote a C compiler. Another migrated an Nintendo game to run in the browser. A non-tech guy built an entire web app in 10 minutes. An AI invented a new game (ask for links).

Are these true?

Well, some are true, but they are anecdotic, exaggerated, not replicable.

If you examine them closely, none is a genuine example of truly innovative real-world application, built from scratch without human help.

It is trivial to write a C compiler in 2026. We already have thousands of open-source C compilers. 

It is trivial to rewrite an application from one language to another.

AI-generated code has security / architecture /design problems, needs huge corrections and rewrites to make it viable.

I keep an open mind, I read and follow developments, I test new stuff (never enough). But I haven’t seen a reliable case of a real, original application entirely generated by AI - yet.

That being said:

I STRONGLY BELIEVE IN AI and the AI REVOLUTION.

It is already transformative, it revolutionizes the society and economy.

As of now, AI doesn't operate independently. Doesn't replace teams of developers, nor music composers, painters, translators.

It only helps them.

AI remains an assistant, for those programmers / architects / composers / managers who are smart enough to control an army of AI agents. Essentially the same visionaries who already knew how to coordinate teams of human agents, to achieve original, impressive results.

The reality is that we now have (many) agents that can quickly solve deterministic computational problems. But we’re still talking about armies of junior agents — unoriginal, not very smart, and very fast. 

Villeneuve's Dune doesn't know if it is more like a book, or like a movie

There are authors like Frank Herbert and Philip K. Dick whose books are very difficult to make into a movie. Villeneuve proves this again with Dune. 

It is a nice movie. But it's not quite the book, and it's also not very different or new from the book.

Movies need action, and very often books have deeper messages. Dune the book is a metaphor about human society, about manipulation and power. It has very little technology. The action scenes are difficult to imagine or depict, e.g. the riding (or dismounting) of the worms, or the knife duels with force shields, or space travel based on spice tanks.

Having read the books a few times, the action is very predictable to me. With every reading, you find more subtleties and depths in the book. You cannot put these in a movie, otherwise you come up with a Tarkovski, and nobody watches.

Interestingly, there are quite a few great Philip K. Dick movies, but their secret is probably that they are mostly action, and didn't try to be a lot more. E.g. Minority Report, Blade Runner, Adjustment Bureau, Paycheck.

Dune is much more difficult to transform into an action movie, because the action doesn't make a lot of sense without the metaphors behind, and movie metaphors are different than book metaphors.

 The movie tries a little bit too much to be a book, while also being a movie.

Cleaning up Beatles' Revolver: is this better? Obviously, with AI

Abbey Road studio relaunched Beatles' Revolver with a cleaner sound, based on original studio recordings; and of course with AI. Because everything was once better with Bluetooth, but everything is now better with AI.

Is the new album better than the original?

I have the feeling that the sound is indeed cleaner.

The problem with these cleanups is that I don't know if cleaner is better. 

Was this the intention of the artists? Most likely not. If the Beatles wanted clean sound, they would have made it cleaner. But no. They were playing with strange instruments and sounds, and with strange studio effects. They would speed tracks up and down by ear, turn tracks upside down, change tempo and key in the middle of a song, mix voices, styles, instruments and tracks randomly. They were super high throughout the recordings, and it shows.

Somehow, cleaning up the original Beatles' sound made me think of clarifying the colors of Degas; or sharpening a bit the lips of Mademoiselle Pogany.