ABOUT THIS EPISODE
This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/automating-my-favorite-part-of-software-engineering.
A software engineer reflects on how AI agents took over coding, debugging, and code reviews, raising questions about the future of engineering.
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I don’t really write code anymore.
That feels strange to admit after nearly 20 years of building software at Microsoft and Docusign. But it's the truth. These days, I plan things out with AI, and it handles the implementation. We even have agents reviewing other agents' code and fixing bugs while I sleep.
It’s incredible to watch, but it also means I've automated away the parts of the job I used to love the most - like falling down a rabbit hole to debug a tricky issue.
It got me thinking: if agents are doing the heavy lifting, do we still need to understand every single line of code? Or is the job of a software engineer just moving up a level?
I wrote down some thoughts on this shift, what we're gaining, and what we might be letting go of.
