The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology makes a major move: the software industry is truly about to change.

On September 11, MIIT issued the "AI + Software" Special Action Implementation Plan.
One figure in it is particularly noteworthy:
By 2028, intelligent programming tools must cover 20,000 large-scale software enterprises.

What does this mean?
It is not simply about letting programmers use AI to write code in the future.
Rather, it is the national level beginning to push:

the entire software industry to change how it produces.

How did software companies make money in the past?
Taking on projects, hiring programmers, piling up manpower, quoting by person-days or by project.
So what was the core asset of a software project?
Programmers' time.
If a project needed 10 people for half a year, you sold 10 people's half-year cost.

But AI is gradually breaking this logic apart.
If 10 people for half a year in the past can now be done by 5 people with AI, or even by a small team, will customers still be willing to pay for all those "person-days"?
This is the real change in the software industry.

01Software Enterprises Transitioning to AI Application Service Providers

So in this policy, one sentence is particularly worth attention:
Promote software enterprises to transition into AI application service providers.
This sentence is essentially telling software companies:
in the future, do not just "develop software,"
but start providing intelligent capabilities and AI services.

What does this mean?
In the past, when customers came to you, they said:
"Help me develop an MES."
In the future, it may become:
"Help me make my MES intelligent."
In the past:
"Develop an OA for me."
In the future, it may become:
"I want an agent that can handle approvals, analyse data, and invoke systems on its own."

Customers may not even care how many programmers you used in the future.
They only care about:

whether you can use AI to solve my business problem.

For software companies, the impact is enormous.
Especially for the large number of small and medium-sized software companies.
In the past, the competition was programmer headcount, development cycles, and quotes.
In the future, the competition may be:
industry understanding, AI capability, software engineering capability, and the ability to truly land AI in the business.

02The Same Applies to Programmers

The same applies to programmers.
At this launch event, the China Software Industry Association explicitly stated that the weight of pure coding execution capability will decline, while requirements understanding, architecture design, system integration, quality, and security control capabilities will become increasingly important.

So AI will not simply "eliminate programmers," but it will certainly redefine them.

People who can write code remain important.But people who can only write code will become less and less valuable.What is truly valuable are those who can break a business requirement into a system architecture, then direct AI to complete the development, and finally take responsibility for the result.

03What Is Truly Worth Vigilance Is Not "Will Programmers Lose Their Jobs"

So what this policy truly calls on the software industry to be vigilant about is not "will programmers lose their jobs."
But rather:

If the way software is produced has already changed, are your company, your business model, and your capability structure still stuck in the past?

Because the next round of competition in the software industry
may not be "who has more programmers."
But rather:

who can produce more software with fewer people;who can turn software into true AI services.

This may be the real transformation brought by "AI + software."