Coding is not software engineering
Matias Heikkilä: AI Can Code, but It Can't Build Software
Coding, however, is not what most people are getting paid for. Building a production-ready app is not coding, it’s software engineering.
Absolutely true. I've said a few times that the software development work I do now looks a hell of a lot like what I did a couple years ago, I'm just physically typing out the exact code a lot less. I'm still thinking about the product experience. I'm still thinking about scalability. I'm still thinking about what technologies are right to use. I'm still thinking about structure. I'm still thinking about pretty much everything I was thinking about before. My ability to write a specific function is less important than my ability to understand why that function needs to exist in the first place or how it will impact other parts of the application.
Maybe LLMs will eventually get to a place where I can totally step aside and let it do all the software engineering for me, but color me skeptical that we're going to get there anytime soon.
