Software Engineering is not dead, damn it. Anything research and original is not dead. Are these things fantastic at connecting concepts, producing digital work products, and putting out derivate hypotheses? Sure. But proper original thought is still firmly in the realm of humans. Though speed of propagation of new ideas probably did change massively.
In a way, many “novel” ideas are mathematical restructurings of existing ideas. I think we’ve seen a fair number of examples by now, especially in the realm of mathematics, of LLMs producing these novel ideas. I’d imagine Lee Se-dol would agree.
We haven't seen that in software development though. Chris Lattner, inventor of the Swift programming language recently took a look at a compiler entirely written by Claude AI. Lattner found nothing innovative in the code generated by AI [1]. And this is why humans will be needed to advance the state of the art.
The line between Computer Science and Software Engineering is pretty blurry and the term "Software Engineering" has been controversial from the get go. Bolting together established enterprise patterns may be dead but creative problem solving with automation and the science of computers surely is not.
Software Engineering is not dead, damn it. Anything research and original is not dead. Are these things fantastic at connecting concepts, producing digital work products, and putting out derivate hypotheses? Sure. But proper original thought is still firmly in the realm of humans. Though speed of propagation of new ideas probably did change massively.
In a way, many “novel” ideas are mathematical restructurings of existing ideas. I think we’ve seen a fair number of examples by now, especially in the realm of mathematics, of LLMs producing these novel ideas. I’d imagine Lee Se-dol would agree.
> LLMs producing these novel ideas
We haven't seen that in software development though. Chris Lattner, inventor of the Swift programming language recently took a look at a compiler entirely written by Claude AI. Lattner found nothing innovative in the code generated by AI [1]. And this is why humans will be needed to advance the state of the art.
[1] https://www.modular.com/blog/the-claude-c-compiler-what-it-r...
> Anything research and original is not dead.
Even if are right here (and I think you are), software engineering can still be dead.
The line between Computer Science and Software Engineering is pretty blurry and the term "Software Engineering" has been controversial from the get go. Bolting together established enterprise patterns may be dead but creative problem solving with automation and the science of computers surely is not.
[delayed]
Software development evolves. Every decade. Or faster. Always has, and always will.
There's still plenty of innovation in the software space. Look at Roc-lang, for example. Fairly ideal as a human-agent collaborative language.