Why Software Engineering Is Indispensable in the Age of Coding Agents

The paper questions whether AI could render Software Engineering (SE) and software engineers obsolete, concluding that the opposite is true: the rise of advanced AI coding agents actually makes SE and engineers essential. It identifies three structural properties of large language models—probabilistic generation, agnosticism, and semantic statelessness—that create a structural vacuum. To fill this vacuum, the authors argue for four knowledge levers—methodological knowledge, domain knowledge, design choices, and process choices—each requiring the software engineer as methodologist, mediator, and custodian.

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