Comment by agentultra
2 hours ago
The premise here is that, “software engineering is solved.” That is not a valid statement. There is nothing to, “solve.” Engineering is a practice; not a game or puzzle with a solution. It is a way of developing software.
I take the view that we should continue to practice software engineering. Every time you let an LLM generate some code for you is one opportunity you’ve missed to flex your muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it. Just as you can lose vocabulary and the ability to read over time: these are not skills inherent to us! They’re learned and they must be practiced or else they will disappear.
There are ways to use these systems, if you find them ethically agreeable, in the practice of software engineering. But it cannot replace it. That part is the shared legacy inherited and preserved by each of us practicing it.
What makes you so certain that this 'way of developing software' cannot eventually be understood and practiced by AI?
I think precisely the premise of the blog post is that there will be a moment (sooner or later) where flexing that 'engineering' muscle to avoid it disappearing is irrelevant, in that this muscle will not be needed due to AI replacing it.
So it seems you are rejecting this premise?
Yes, precisely.
People can choose to stop practicing it. Like they choose to not learn cursive or shorthand and they choose to stop reading long form books and essays. If people stop practicing software engineering then yes, it will disappear.
AI won’t replace it. It’s not human. It doesn’t think, feel, reason, care about, have thoughts or visions of the future. It doesn’t wake up in the morning or dream at night. It doesn’t get inspired. It doesn’t talk with other people and collaborate and share stories with them in the evenings about the struggles they’ve had working on a hard problem.
It’s an algorithm that runs on a machine that performs query analysis and inference on a model.
It can’t tell you what you want, that your specification is wrong, that you’re better off choosing a different avenue.
It doesn’t enrich your own knowledge and practice using it.
Sure, it can be used to generate lots of code. We can tweak the harnesses and parameters to optimize it to solve many classes of problems. But what do you think engineering is?
I don’t think AI is going to replace people. People are going to choose to do that. And some of use are going to believe them. Some of us aren’t.
A quote attributed to Pablo Picasso expresses it well: “What good are computers? They can only give you answers.”
> It can’t tell you what you want, that your specification is wrong, that you’re better off choosing a different avenue.
I’m sorry, but I’m baffled by this? I’ve had plenty of times where I’ve had an agent check a spec or propose alternatives. And for that matter, I also read novels now on recommendation of an LLM using my existing favorite books, that’s pretty explicitly telling me what I want.
> What makes you so certain that this 'way of developing software' cannot eventually be understood and practiced by AI?
That doesn't make it solved though. I also take issue with specifically "software engineering is a solved problem". Even Boris from Anthropic said it =( I thought he'd be the one to understand more deeply.
If we translate the criticism charitably "solving" anything is pretty aggressive with regard to the long tail of nuance and care and effort and mastery and such. I think that's what we should focus on. When we proclaim that a discipline that people have spent large parts of their lives mastering is "solved" it doesnt' feel so great. That doesn't prove otherwise, but at least let's get to the root of the meaning. I don't think it's solved. If we understand that software is really about solving human problems through technology, within real-life constraints, then AI isn't very good at that. It doesn't have "taste" is the soundbite. It is the root cause of why AI slop is called AI slop.
I suspect part of the taste problem is that the average person…has no taste (which is why so much AI slop is being shared to begin with). I also see no reason to believe that this isn’t a problem to be fixed, rather than some inherit limitation of generative AI.
1 reply →