OpinionMay 14, 2026•7 min read
The Jevons Paradox of Software Engineering
AI writes code faster than I do. For some things, it writes better code than I do, and after all the work I've put into this craft, that stings a little. But what I can't accept is the conclusion that this means fewer engineers. Every time a tool made software cheaper to build, we built more software, not less. Jevons saw this coming in 1865. His subject was coal. His insight was about what happens to demand when something gets cheaper to produce. That insight hasn't aged a day.
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