The notion that software engineers will be replaced...

The notion that software engineers will be replaced by AI anytime soon makes me laugh a bit. Sure, do LLMs enable the generation of code that can be decent when prompted well? Yes. Is a software engineer's job all about producing decent code? Not entirely." "" "Software engineering is all about layers of abstraction; the higher the abstraction, the potentially more leverage you get on the system below, but with more layers comes more complexity and work. " "" "It may be true that software engineers will need to write less code in the future, but that doesn't necessarily mean there will be fewer software engineers. Our world depends on software as it is, and that dependency is only deepening. Even with the massive productivity gain that LLMs can provide, we still have more software to build than we are capable of building. " "" "As the now infamous XKCD comic shows us, these layers of abstraction sometimes rest on the flimsiest of foundations. There's a ton of work ahead of us in strengthening our foundations as we continue to build more and more layers, and I can't wait for AI to help us.

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Original post on LinkedIn