The software developer seems to be obsolete. The prompt engineer is ready to take the mantle, except, he doesn't have the tools to become a developer.

Ibrahim Diallo

A veteran software engineer reflects on how AI tools have democratized software creation, making non-programmers capable of building and shipping products. The author grapples with feeling obsolete as friends and family bypass developers entirely, using AI agents to build platforms from single prompts. Despite the existential anxiety, the author argues that traditional engineers who learned through debugging, reading docs, and writing real code will ultimately remain essential — because software must be maintained, not just created. The piece draws a parallel between today's AI hype and the Silverlight era, warning against betting everything on a single technology.

Software Engineers are Obsolete

This is a decent write-up, but I find that we’re going through another phase of the no-code craze which ALSO heralded the end of the software developer, and which ended in the same way that this one likely will too: with the realization that launch day is just the beginning.
<img src="https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--iRh6F0bs--/f_auto/v1778713250/ugc/content_67ff2791-1ff3-49b2-a9a7-57c70b73ef5f?_a=BAMAMiWQ0" alt="image.png">
<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/new-startup-no-code-no-problem/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://www.wired.com/story/new-startup-no-code-no-problem/</a>

<pre><code>We&#x27;ve been bombarded by AI for several years now, even in a slow market like the Italian one, various agents and software are being adopted, but in essence, I haven&#x27;t formed an opinion on it yet. 
I mean, I&#x27;m aware that it&#x27;s a very powerful tool, I&#x27;m aware that the technology is growing at an absurd rate, but at the same time, I see that unless you&#x27;re a large, powerful company, using AI and integrating it into internal projects is truly complicated. 
For example, I&#x27;ve been working for at least a year on a relatively new software (5/6 years old), and it&#x27;s perfectly customized for what it needs to do: you click a button, enter the results, the calculations start, and it returns the result. Now, the enthusiasm to be able to integrate AI into this software is obviously there, but if you look at the real facts, right now and for at least another 5 years, it&#x27;s an impossible thing, precisely because of the calculations it performs. 
So my question is, how much longer do I have to enjoy pure, raw coding?

PS. I have some external consultants who use Agents to work on the software, but they often break it.
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