How is that a paradox? It’s like saying its a paradox that cameras on phone made it much easier to photograph and as a result, people make more photos. That isn’t a paradox, that is natural. Same for writing software.
Maybe Fallacy is a better word than Paradox? Take a look at any AI-related thread and it’s filled to the brim with people lamenting the coming collapse of software development jobs. You might believe that this is obvious but to many, many people it’s anything but.
My understanding of how this relates to Jevons paradox, is because it had been believed that advances in tooling would mean that companies could lower their headcount, because developers would become more efficient, however it has the opposite effect:
Every abstraction layer - from assembly to C to Python to frameworks to low-code - followed the same pattern. Each one was supposed to mean we’d need fewer developers. Each one instead enabled us to build more software.
The meta-point here is that we keep making the same prediction error. Every time we make something more efficient, we predict it will mean less of that thing. But efficiency improvements don’t reduce demand - they reveal latent demand that was previously uneconomic to address. Coal. Computing. Cloud infrastructure. And now, knowledge work.
Very good explanation, thanks!
