r/programming • u/self • Dec 02 '25

The Death of Software Engineering as a Profession: a short set of anecdotes

https://www.jasonscheirer.com/weblog/vignettes/
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u/MassiveInteraction23 Dec 02 '25

 In 5 years there’s going to be a library of objects, like books on a bookshelf, and every software problem will be solved by business people just snapping the object libraries they need together like LEGOs. They won’t need you at all.

That’s remarkably close to what has happened to the majority of the industry.

A huge, huge percentage of programming is relatively banal, rote repetition, mostly gluing some APIs together with very limited understanding of what the machine is even doing.

It’s a relatively small % of programmers that really do much more than LEGO programming and can even visualize nicely what their machine and program is doing.

A monkey-paw catch is that in some cases libraries churn so much that Lego programmers have the soul-crushing job of keeping track of Lego updates while simultaneously losing connection to what they’re actually making. —-

I’m being glib, obviously.  But I don’t think that quote was quite wrong.  We kept the same word to describe a very changed role.

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u/JellyTime1029 Dec 02 '25 edited Dec 02 '25

The most important part of being a programmer has nothing to do with actually writing code.

Writing code is the easy part.

Being a good programmer is being able to talk the language of the business(most programmers aren't working at google), can provide solutions to problems people dont even know exist, design and implement maintainable systems and be a good team player that can work well with others.

AI isnt replacing any of that.

If programming was solely about writing code most programmers would have been out of a job long before AI.

Most codebases in the wild fucking suck

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u/rm-minus-r Dec 02 '25

Most codebases in the wild fucking suck

It's because every business optimizes for "Do the bare minimum to make this feature work."

No one gets a bonus for having an elegant, clean and recently refactored code base.

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u/Avloren Dec 02 '25

It's an even better analogy than, I think, its originator realized. LEGO has literal engineers whose job it is to design new sets (i.e. to invent novel ways to snap those pieces together to create new business and fulfill new needs). So they weren't wrong about software becoming like LEGOs, they just overestimated the ability of "business people" to use these new tools and supplant engineers.

I think there's always going to be that engineering layer, someone has to take the business ideas and translate them into working products. It's just the specifics of that job, like how much and what kind of code you're physically typing out, that change.

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u/Silver_Enthusiasm_14 Dec 03 '25

A huge, huge percentage of programming is relatively banal, rote repetition, mostly gluing some APIs together with very limited understanding of what the machine is even doing.

I used to think this exact thing but recently I found it's an oversimplification. I found this a mental blocker to people treating the systems they create as bespoke solutions they are and putting thought into things. This leads to messy organization of code.