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nicce | on: Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't
> It most certainly will replace software engineers.

I would say it will most certainly replace software developers. There is a subtle difference between these terms.

tvink | parent | next
There truly is not. Software engineering is not different in any meaningful way. Sure 30 years ago in waterfall land we were emulating the project management of engineering, with miserably expensive results. But it's all the same now. It's like differentiation between coding and programming, it's different in everyone's head.
nicce | root | parent
If there is no difference, then it is just the result of everyone inflating the term in their CVs/LinkedIn etc.

Software developer typically is the one which builds typical CRUD app, front-end, back-end with database and something around that. Their main job is to make the software to apply clear business requirements on software level, while the software itself is not likely revolutionary. Or they are not the responsible ones to make it revolutionary. They provide code in demand.

Then there are engineers that may apply math problems to software and optimise and develop new algorithms, compilers etc. The software itself might be revolutionary and the business.

vovavili | root | parent
In a landscape like that, good luck proving to a hyper-cautious employer that you actually are a skilled software engineer and not just a larping ticket shuffler. In the near future, I fear the person who will decidedly be able to prove that with Olympiad placements or a swarm of unique side projects is the kind of person who might as well just go on and start his own tech startup. Most of us here at least have some track record of employment and seniority, I suspect brilliant junior engineers will be hopping from internship to internship like they do in top-level finance.
wiseowise | parent | next
“Software developers” and “software engineers” distinction has the same energy when one uses to pat oneself on a back when they call themselves “expat” instead of an “immigrant”. You write code, all the huff and puff around “architecturing”, and “alignment”, and “knowing what to build” is just vapor. I’ve never met “software developer”, outside of online forums, who did “coding” and none of the latter.
rspeele | root | parent
Yep. "Developer" was already an inflation over "programmer".

Sometime in the late 2000s/early 2010s people started saying, oh, a programmer means you just type in the code to implement requirements, a developer actually understands and can create the requirements to meet the business needs! Like that wasn't what people were already doing for decades and calling "programming".

edit: I guess it was offshoring that encouraged the self-marketing as a "developer" (not one of those programmers you can get anywhere for cheap) just as AI is doing the same thing with "engineer"

keybored | parent
Just changing words and saying (perhaps) that one is “just about code” and the other is about “architecture” rings hollow. LLMs can think (like submarines can swim) so the only question is how well.