Withertos And Whyfors

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: there’s more to being a software engineer than coding. In fact, coding isn’t even the hardest part.

The point of that latter article is that AI won’t replace programmers any time soon, but not because it can’t code. Rather because it needs to know what it’s coding for, and specifying that well is what matters, whether it be a carefully constructed prompt to GPT or a detailed requirements document.

One of my favorite sayings is “It’s only software!” And I mean it, in that with enough time and money, computers can do just about anything (which is itself pretty darn cool). But no amount of software can determine what ought to be built. To do that we must apply a broader set of tools.