I love the craft of coding. There’s something uniquely therapeutic about it. An idea or solution abstracted by a programming language that you get to write in the way you want. Writing code can look and feel unique, it doesn’t just have to work.
This is at odds with today’s AI-everything environment. LLMs are no longer a somewhat useful gimmick and have matured to the point where most programmers are either being told to use them or already are doing so in their day-to-day work. And with that goes some of the ‘craft’. People tend to pick sides, but it doesn’t change the trajectory. I, myself, do not have control over this either, although I sometimes wish I did.
For software engineers, the future isn’t just the craft anymore, it’s becoming a more flexible problem solver and builder. Engineers are going to be expected to not just code, but also embed themselves into other teams and bodies of work. They may need to play the designer, the customer advocate, the product manager, or the team lead. This already happens in some capacity if you work at a startup-sized company, but for others, this is a big shift in perspective. Software engineers are fantastic problem solvers, and that doesn’t just start and end with the code. Plenty of engineers already know this, but now all engineers are going to start facing this changing environment sooner or later.
We’ve always said, ‘anyone can code’, now they can. However, they aren’t crafting code in sustainable, maintainable, secure, or scalable ways. This is an opportunity for us to fill the gaps, rise up to the occasion, and become a new breed of software engineer. Holding onto what our environment was like before AI got involved isn’t going to change the fact that it’s here to stay, and I certainly wouldn’t want any of my fellow engineers to fall behind. Even taking the time to learn the intricacies of how LLMs work will benefit you and others when you need to interface with one or someone using one. This is just a new domain to learn, which isn’t new to us.
Things will settle, and we’ll find our groove again, but just make sure you’re there with everyone to lead the way.