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PAndreew | on: How I write software with LLMs
Others have already partially answered this, but here’s my 20 cents. Software development really is similar to architecture. The end result is an infrastructure of unique modules with different type of connectors (roads, grid, or APIs). Until now in SW dev the grunt work was done mostly by the same people who did the planning, decided on the type of connectors, etc. Real estate architects also use a bunch of software tools to aid them, but there must be a human being in the end of the chain who understands human needs, understands - after years of studying and practicing - how the whole building and the infrastructure will behave at large and who is ultimately responsible for the end result (and hopefully rewarded depending on the complexity and quality of the end result). So yes we will not need as many SW engineers, but those who remain will work on complex rewarding problems and will push the frontier further.
rurban | parent | next
Since I worked as an architect some comments.

Architecture is fine for big, complex projects. Having everything planned out before keeps cost down, and ensures customer will not come with late changes. But if cost are expected to be low, and there's no customer, architecture is overkill. It's like making a movie without following the script line by line (watch Godard in Novelle Vague), or building it by yourself or by a non-architect. 2x faster, 10x cheaper. You immediately see an inflexible overarchitectured project.

You can do fine by restricting the agent with proper docs, proper tests and linters.

dgb23 | parent
The "grunt work" is in many cases just that. As long as it's readable and works it's fine.

But there are a substantial amount cases where this isn't true. The nitty gritty is then the important part and it's impossible to make the whole thing work well without being intimate with the code.

So I never fully bought into the clean separation of development, engineering and architecture.