My Take on the Future of Software Engineering

In this article I want to share my thoughts on the future of software engineering and how AI is changing the industry.

By 2026, almost everyone uses AI agents for coding. It’s a fact. Software development has changed. It’s no longer the same job it was three years ago.

Developers use AI to generate code, some of them more than others. Some of them use it to generate entire codebases, some only generate small pieces of code.

Everybody has different workflow currently. Some developers still rely on manual prompting, while others run agents in loops for hours.

The standard workflow of a developer using AI is not completely formed. Yet.

The fact is: AI has changed the way we develop software. I don’t think we will ever return to the pre-AI era.

Probably in some niche cases code could be still written manually, but for majority of the cases it will be generated by AI.

Skepticism

I was an AI skeptic several years ago. I could see the models producing bad code, making silly mistakes, creating bugs and other issues. Since then models improved significantly 🧠.

Modern AI models are able to generate code that is production ready, often much better than I could have written myself. And of course much faster.

I wasn’t alone in my skepticism. Many famous engineers were against of using AI for coding. And now almost nobody remained. I’ve seen some of the greatest talents in software development give up the fight and fully embrace Agentic Engineering.

Many well known engineers in the industry like Uncle Bob Martin, Kent Beck, Martin Fowler, David Heinemeier Hansson, Mitchell Hashimoto, Kent C Dodds, Gergely Orosz, etc. have publicly discussed adopting AI tools in their work.

Many other engineers around the world gave up. I also gave up.

The great analogy of AI acceptance in software development can be described as “5 stages of grief”:

I went through all of these stages myself 😰. Now I’m in acceptance stage. I believe AI is the future and I’m excited to see where it leads us.

I’ve seen several people going through these stages, those with more experience went through them faster.

AI in software development isn’t going anywhere. It will only get cheaper, and developers will use it more and more. Like, a lot more.

I’m no longer pessimistic about this change. Actually the opposite, I’m quite optimistic about the future of software development.

What’s changed

The implementation phase of software development has shrunk. And the focus has shifted to other areas of Software Development Lifecycle.

This is well shown on the following image:

Writing code with AI became fast and cheap. You can now generate code in seconds. This means code by itself is not that valuable anymore. But what’s then important?

Design, planning, architecture, testing, debugging, verifying, operations, etc. These are the things that are currently not automated by AI.

Codding agents allow us completely skip the implementation part, thats why some people claim that coding is solved 🤦.

In reality though, I think it just adds another layer of abstraction to an already complex stuff we do. We don’t replace what we know, we add AI on top of it.

The existing knowledge of software design and architecture are still valuable. This knowledge help us understand what to build, judge results, maintain the quality and guide the agentic coding process.

There are so many new concepts and ideas evolved already: Spec Driven Development, Agentic Engineering, Multi-agent systems, Software Factory, MCP, rules, skills, guardrails, evals and so on…

And I kinda like it. I think we have the biggest opportunity to grow and bring value as a software engineer in this new era. The industry is transforming rapidly.

Will AI replace software engineers?

No. Software engineers are not replaced by AI. AI is accelerating the development process, but we should change our mindset and stop thinking about AI as a replacement.

I like the pilot analogy. Even if the autopilot can fly the plane autonomously, the pilot is still needed to make sure the plane is flying safely. 🛩️

Decision making is still a human responsibility. Understanding context, business requirements, knowing which problems are worth solving, and making trade-off decisions, these skills have never been more valuable.

AI can code for us and we try to optimize the software development process. There’s a new trend called “Agentic Software Factory” which is a good example of this.

This might feel like we’re trying to replace ourselves. But who is going to create, maintain, improve, monitor, and debug the software factory? 🏭

Of course you need software engineers for this. Judging output quality, monitoring systems, debugging, and maintaining code standards - that’s still a lot of work.

Stakeholders can contribute by providing clear requirements, context, and feedback, or by submitting prototypes. But I can’t imagine they want to spend their time debugging and testing.

Your boss can’t one shot features with a single prompt. Honestly, nobody can one shot features actually. It’s just not possible (at least for now).

Even with AI, verification, debugging, and planning still take time, experience, and real effort. And maybe product owners just don’t have time to make all of that? 😔

There’s a concept called Jevon’s paradox - the more efficient a technology becomes, the more it gets used. If we can build more software with AI, businesses will simply demand more software. That could actually lead to more jobs for engineers, not fewer.

The total amount of code we operate will grow. Not just building, but reviewing and testing will be optimized too. Software will get cheaper, so there will be much more of it.

And as we know, when something scales, it always gets complex. We’ll need more sophisticated ways to manage that complexity.

AI sucked all the fun out

Nobody writes code by hand anymore, so is the fun gone?

Developers who loved coding and treated it as an art form are now struggling to find the same satisfaction. I completely get it.

Many developers today are feeling lost, frustrated, or even depressed about their work. People are sad and worried.

The job of an engineering leader has gotten significantly harder. Paradoxically, we have more work now than before AI. A lot of people are quitting, taking career breaks, or experiencing burnout…

But I want you to hear this: the era of writing code by hand is over. We need to understand and accept that. Maybe we can find fun in other parts of the software development process?

I do see a light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t see a reason to be pessimistic anymore.

Every time a new model drops, we see the same titles: “AI is taking over”, “engineers are being replaced”, “we’re all doomed”, “we’re cooked.” 🤯

You can believe in AGI, super intelligence, the singularity, all of it. But personally, I don’t see any real signs of that happening anytime soon. So I don’t.

For now, there’s still needed human in the loop.

We still need to know how to code. We still review code, probably all of it, for now. I may change my opinion later, but today I think code reviews still matter. We are generating code now, but trying to control the slop.

I beg you - please stop generating 1,000 line markdown files! If it’s context for an agent, fine - but if I am going to read it with my human eyes, show some respect. Don’t make it slop. Respect your peers.

Yes, the implementation part is gone. This is something we should understand and accept. If the joy for you was only in writing code, then it’s going to be a hard unfortunately.

For me I understood that it was not. It was always about solving problems by building systems.

And that part? That’s still there. I can feel the fun came back. 🙂

AI is an opportunity for us

Engineers around the world are figuring out the new way of developing software. And it is still ongoing. We have the biggest opportunity to observe and participate in this transformation.

Adopting Agentic Engineering is not easy. Not only engineers should change their mindset, but also stakeholders, product owners, and processes inside the teams must be adapted. The business should also understand the new reality of working.

There so many unknowns currently. Everything changed so fast. This is very exciting times! 🚀

How do people get grades? What’s now valued? What should be asked now on interviews? What is valued for promotion?

There is a huge opportunity right now for engineering leaders to lead the change to agentic software development. Majority of leads of software companies have no understanding of what is happening yet.

People have no idea what to do. I see it everywhere. There is so much need for someone who can navigate through this new reality and guide others to do the same.

There is a lot of room currently, for people who can change team processes to produce less slop, higher quality, economically viable and faster software. How many people can explain what the agent is? What harness really means?

Ethics

I was always for responsible use of AI. I believe in the importance of ethics in software development.

We should never dehumanize people. Trying to achieve any super intelligence with a message “that you don’t matter” is disgusting. 😥

I believe we should never try to completely optimize yourself out. This should not be the goal. We don’t want to replace people with robots. This should not be the idea, I believe. We should always be human.

Progress should be happening but the human should still stay. And we should not try to remove the human, because then what the hell you are going to do? We should use human best parts like: creativity, empathy, problem solving, communication, etc.

The idea is to remove human completely from software development process is just dumb. If you are trying to work on this thing, then what latter are you planning to do? What will be your role then?

I don’t support any of these ideas. Because it is simply dangerous. Why even working in this direction?

People who built atom reactors, were thinking about safety. Then why we are not doing the same for AI?

I will never support and promote this idea. I would like to promote idea that human is still very important, but the way we work should is really changed and we should not lose control.

Final words

I definitely can be wrong with my predictions, predictions are always hard to make. Nobody knows the future. But I hope this article can help engineers to find their purpose again and explain the necessity of adopting AI in their workflow.

Thank you very much for reading this article! Share my thoughts with me, I’m glad to discuss with you anytime.

Happy agentic engineering! 🤖