Is software engineering heading towards obsoletion?
What the title says. Have most of the heavy lifting moved to cloud. Too many ready to use solutions. Is software engineering a dying art at this stage?
Demand for programmers is at an all-time high, and grows every year. There are no signs of a slowdown I know about. Someone has to write the cloud SAAS and build the infrastructure and integration around those. Companies grow, requirements change, technologies evolve. I’ve been hearing predictions about demand for programming skills decreasing for 4 decades, it has yet to happen.
No. Most people lack the numeracy/logical reasoning skills to even configure nearly ready-to-deploy software and services for specific business use cases. There will always be a domain for people with this particular talent. Plus there’s billions of people out there yet to be served by the existing stuff.
Not at all. We have barely scratched the surface of what computers can accomplish and all of that will require programmers. Comment’s mentioning AI obviously haven’t spent much time actually working on AI projects because it is a long time away from being able to even develop simple crud applications without developer intervention. Software Engineers will have jobs long after you and I are dead
Not by a long shot. There is an irreducible tension between lean 80% solutions to targeted problems and enterprise kitchen sink solutions to “integrate” everything. The latter inevitably sucks which means there’s always an opportunity for the former. As long as we don’t let megacorps gain complete control through market dominance there will be no shortage of new and interesting work.
Yes.
I think programming work in the next decade will be done by logicians using something like TLA+[0] to simply describe specifications.
And something like GitHub co-pilot to translate those specifications to working code.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLA%2B
What are people putting in the cloud? Software developed by engineers! What is the cloud? Software developed by engineers! What are ready-to-use solutions? Software developed by engineers! How are people accessing all this stuff? Software developed by engineers!
There's plenty of engineers needed for the internet, but even if we assume the internet will never need any more software engineers, there are still tons of other areas that do: embedded, automotive, manufacturing, phone apps, defense, logistics/supply-chain, etc.
Nope. The absolute hardest part about building software (at the intersection of frequent problem / difficult problem) is capturing business requirements and making the computer do that thing.
This is a people problem. Not a code problem.
Software development will never be automated unless people can begin creating extremely accurate business requirements. And that is never going to happen unless human nature changes. And it won't.
If the bubble bursts a lot of BS jobs will go away including a lot of jobs in the 'innovative' sector, which only exist due to Americans having more cash than they know what to do with. Think the 23rd food delivery app, uber but for x, crypto, etc. Cowboys will be devastated but the highly skilled and credentialed will always have options.
Lonewolf software engineer(ing)
That is those without sale and marketing team or resource. As a software engineer, you will be fine indefinitely. As a software engineer founder of a company or just an indie who likes to develop and sell software, it becomes more and more inhabitable.
Once AI smart enough to write complete software packages exists, that means that AI will have also penetrated other parts of society like driving and Medicine and Law.
Professions which are way easier to automate than software development.
Radiology and Driving are the canary in the coal mine in my opinion.
well, it is evolving... a dying art - for sure, the "golden" days are long over, however that does not mean its not a viable job anymore..
There is so much automation to be done that engineering is going to stay. Software is eating the world and there is a lot morr eating to be done.
Yes but so is everything else, AI is eating the world. No profession will be spared, even the oldest is getting AI'fied.
Yes, AI and/or commoditisation will take over. Programming will look more like collaboration with AI agents, and developers will be paid for creative insights, not for grunt work.
But not for a while. My personal estimate is 25 yrs +/-10. 50 yrs would be the absolute limit.
I'm not sure I'd expect the startup scene to survive much beyond than that. For various reasons, it will either become impossibly difficult or trivially easy to start an online business.