is jevons' paradox the reason for the next billion developers?
the journey to enabling the next billion developers is going to be interesting.
as Satya Nadella "comforted" silicon valley titans worried about the impact of deepseek by quoting jevons' paradox—which states that increased efficiency leads to greater consumption of a resource rather than less—the same principle might drive the rise of the next billion developers. as coding becomes more efficient and the effort required to write code decreases, the demand to write more code will increase, not decrease.
today, only a small percentage of the global population identifies as developers.
but what if someone identified as a "car driver" or a "smartphone user"? you would think that was absurd.
similarly, in the next decade, identifying as a "developer" may seem just as strange. everyone will be building in one form or another, leveraging ai.
that being said, a few counter-points to consider:
1/ jevons' paradox works well for physical resources like coal or electricity, where increased efficiency lowers costs and boosts consumption. but software development isn’t purely about efficiency—it also depends on creativity, problem-solving, and business needs.
2/ driving is ubiquitous, but we still have professional drivers. using a smartphone is universal, but we still have app developers. why would coding be any different? the role of a developer might evolve, but deep technical expertise will still matter. the ability to orchestrate ai-generated code might become its own specialization rather than making "developer" a meaningless term.
3/ even if ai writes most code, programming isn't just syntax vs. system design. debugging, optimization, security, and understanding business logic are critical skills that ai might struggle with. are we underestimating how much human intuition still matters?