Seeing patterns and learning quickly; those are the remaining hallmarks of being a software engineer. Thatโs how it seems to me.
Engineering was always about rapidly absorbing new information, making sense of novel (but strangely familiar looking) situations, before applying the โsystem under testโ approach. Engineering college drilled that into us early on.
Unfortunately, none of that core engineering discipline ever really features on the CV in a highly competitive job market. Rather, technical skills and domain experience are the big flashing neon lights that employers look for.
Expert knowledge of Microsoft C# .Net has let me sleep well at night, knowing itโs the ultimate trump card (excuse the pun) with my fellow non-technical BAs, and even on par with full-time developers. Until recently, that is.
Iโve been keenly watching advances in LLM driven development, and even the most die hard skeptics must be impressed by now. Seeing X recent shoot-em-up made entirely through prompting is certain proof.
The frame rate is laggy even on a decent GPU, but thatโs beside the point. Just the fact that such a game could be created through prompting alone is where all our eyes should be.
Borland Delphi or Visual Basic come to mind when I think about shifts of a similar magnitude. These seem antiquated now, but for those who remember, the introduction of visual IDEs was massive.
I feel excited for the future but sad that another end to a major programming era is coming to a close, and perhaps a little glad Iโm nearer to the end of my career, than the beginning.
I canโt yet imagine a time when I wonโt be hand coding C#, but itโs feeling more like a Sunday night game of solitaire than laying down a full house in Vegas.