A while ago, I was chatting with a friend who has been doing backend development for many years.

He said something that stuck with me for a long time.
He said that now it’s increasingly like humans are responsible for making requests, and AI is responsible for completing the world.
I later realized that software engineering is really heading in this direction.
But that doesn’t mean software engineering will disappear; it’s just gradually shifting from writing code to controlling complex systems.
In the past, a feature from idea to deployment would go through many layers.
Originally, products went from design to frontend, then to backend, and finally testing; now many things have already started to collapse.
Sometimes, one person plus a few models can produce what used to take a small team a week in one night.
But it’s strange—despite this, I feel that the sense of engineering becomes more important.
Because AI will default to helping you generate something that can run, but the hardest part of software has never been running.
It’s long-term maintenance, boundary control, exception handling, and whether you dare to continue making changes after half a year.
I even think that the most powerful engineers in the future might not be the fastest code writers, but those who understand where complex systems are likely to rot.
Because AI will make building increasingly cheaper, but the cost of system out-of-control will become more and more expensive.