My prediction for software engineering over the next 3 to 5 years.
AI won't replace software engineers. It'll drive even greater demand for them.
A team of 5 experienced engineers using AI will outperform a team of 20 pre-AI.
Which will dramatically reduce the cost of building software.
I think we'll see Jevons paradox in action. As something becomes cheaper and more efficient to produce, demand for it can increase dramatically.
Thousands of software projects that previously weren't economically viable will become worth doing.
The winners will be companies, big and small, that behave like Google, Amazon and 3M, with a culture of experimentation, a willingness to try lots of ideas and the discipline to kill their darlings.
TL/DR: Smaller engineering teams, more innovation, more software products, and potentially more software engineers than ever.
What do you think?
AI won't replace software engineers. It'll drive even greater demand for them.
A team of 5 experienced engineers using AI will outperform a team of 20 pre-AI.
Which will dramatically reduce the cost of building software.
I think we'll see Jevons paradox in action. As something becomes cheaper and more efficient to produce, demand for it can increase dramatically.
Thousands of software projects that previously weren't economically viable will become worth doing.
The winners will be companies, big and small, that behave like Google, Amazon and 3M, with a culture of experimentation, a willingness to try lots of ideas and the discipline to kill their darlings.
TL/DR: Smaller engineering teams, more innovation, more software products, and potentially more software engineers than ever.
What do you think?
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Here’s what I think are the fundamentals every software engineer needs to be aware of in the age of agentic software development.
Computer Science fundamentals:
Data structures and algorithms, complexity analysis, programming language fundamentals and techniques, networking, operating systems, databases and data modelling, security, concurrency and parallelism, and distributed systems.
Software Engineering fundamentals:
Design and architecture, design principles, testing and verification, debugging and RCA, requirements engineering, the SDLC, version control and management, API design, quality assurance, reliability engineering.
Systems and Production Engineering fundamentals:
System design, observability, performance, build and deployment, infrastructure and cloud computing, data management and backup and recovery.
What would you add or remove?
Computer Science fundamentals:
Data structures and algorithms, complexity analysis, programming language fundamentals and techniques, networking, operating systems, databases and data modelling, security, concurrency and parallelism, and distributed systems.
Software Engineering fundamentals:
Design and architecture, design principles, testing and verification, debugging and RCA, requirements engineering, the SDLC, version control and management, API design, quality assurance, reliability engineering.
Systems and Production Engineering fundamentals:
System design, observability, performance, build and deployment, infrastructure and cloud computing, data management and backup and recovery.
What would you add or remove?
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We're three weeks into Kestra’s Hacktober Hackathon, and it's great to see what people have been building and contributing so far!
So far, we've seen:
Over 400 good-first-issues merged for track one and over 1900 new blueprints created for track two. Many more of both in flight!
It's been great to see people getting involved, whether they're making their first open-source contribution, fixing something in the codebase, or building a workflow that solves a real problem for them and other developers.
And we're not finished yet, there’s still 10 days to go, meaning there's still time to get involved.
There are two tracks, you can pick up a good-first-issue or create a reusable blueprint. Both tracks have prizes up for grabs:
🥇 1st place: 13” MacBook Neo
🥈 2nd place: Apple iPad
🥉 3rd place: $150 Amazon gift card
Submissions close on 31 October, the winners will be announced on the 18th November.
Register here to take part and make sure your entry is counted: fandf.co/47mBwJt
Full details of the event are here: fandf.co/4yVsuiq
If you've never contributed to open source before, this is a great way to start.
A big thank you to everyone who's contributed so far!
@kestra_io
So far, we've seen:
Over 400 good-first-issues merged for track one and over 1900 new blueprints created for track two. Many more of both in flight!
It's been great to see people getting involved, whether they're making their first open-source contribution, fixing something in the codebase, or building a workflow that solves a real problem for them and other developers.
And we're not finished yet, there’s still 10 days to go, meaning there's still time to get involved.
There are two tracks, you can pick up a good-first-issue or create a reusable blueprint. Both tracks have prizes up for grabs:
🥇 1st place: 13” MacBook Neo
🥈 2nd place: Apple iPad
🥉 3rd place: $150 Amazon gift card
Submissions close on 31 October, the winners will be announced on the 18th November.
Register here to take part and make sure your entry is counted: fandf.co/47mBwJt
Full details of the event are here: fandf.co/4yVsuiq
If you've never contributed to open source before, this is a great way to start.
A big thank you to everyone who's contributed so far!
@kestra_io
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My AI predictions.
In the next 1 to 3 years, Open AI or Anthropic, or both, fail / get acquired for a fraction of their current valuations.
Microsoft, Google or a developer tooling company with access to lots of developers and source code like Sonar or JetBrains wins AI in software engineering.
Probably with smaller, local, specialised models.
Other domain specific companies spring up to win domains such as mathematics, legal, writing, etc.
TL/DR: The technology isn’t going away, but the financial bubble will burst.
What do you think?
In the next 1 to 3 years, Open AI or Anthropic, or both, fail / get acquired for a fraction of their current valuations.
Microsoft, Google or a developer tooling company with access to lots of developers and source code like Sonar or JetBrains wins AI in software engineering.
Probably with smaller, local, specialised models.
Other domain specific companies spring up to win domains such as mathematics, legal, writing, etc.
TL/DR: The technology isn’t going away, but the financial bubble will burst.
What do you think?
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OpenAI's latest models are "stronger capabilities for building and migrating software in low-resource programming languages such as COBOL, Fortran, and Visual Basic."
First time I'm ever seen Visual Basic alongside COBOL and Fortran!
First time I'm ever seen Visual Basic alongside COBOL and Fortran!
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"Apple will be holding a product launch event on October 28 to debut its first touch-screen MacBook"
Is it just me that really hates the idea of touch screen laptops?
Is it just me that really hates the idea of touch screen laptops?
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I agree software engineering will explode.
But, I think it'll be simple things.
Things that weren't always worth building before, but are now cheap enough to build.
But, I think it'll be simple things.
Things that weren't always worth building before, but are now cheap enough to build.
Software engineering as a whole is going to explode in coming years, far from dying. (imho)
We'll keep finding harder, tougher problems to solve that were too complex & time taking to undertake before.
New fields & niches may emerge while current ones get automated.
There's no denying that tech market is cooked & very hard right now, just coz of how difficult it's become for many corpos to adapt to post-ai landscape.
Teams with lean numbers will outperform bigger ones just coz of less overhead & bloat. But we'll have more of these teams, not less, to ship out more & more software for orgs that can build software that was out of their reach coz of budget, manpower & complexity.
They'll ship more, sell more & grow more to undertake more work & employ more in new areas than before.
I could definitely be wrong & we get the "bad ending" (it is what is then sadly)
But there's nothing wrong in being optimistic & keep pushing forward, coz this is the best time to go do & build whatever you'd in your mind coz intelligence has gotten way cheaper than before & it'll only get better.
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I've been wanting a simple screen to track key upcoming work.
A photo frame does the job perfectly.
Thanks for sharing the cool project Wes Bos!
A photo frame does the job perfectly.
Thanks for sharing the cool project Wes Bos!
I have discovered $50 amazon photo frames to be the PERFECT home display screen
They can be rooted, updated to run a modern browser, have WiFi and can be powered from USB
1280×800 resolution with a nice touch screen
I detailed how to hack these yourself in my latest video 9N
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John Crickett retweeted
If you had a ticket to Grace Hopper and have not cancelled your plans to go to the bay, go to LinkedIn and DM GitHub right now if you’d like to attend Universe for free.
Grace Hopper Celebration Canceled: A Big Loss For Women In Tech This Year buff.ly/ZwOSpB6
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I hate people playing the age card!
But I'm old enough to know AI and other things have replaced us at least half a dozen times in the last 40 years.
Yet we're still here being software engineers. And I expect to still be here in a dozen more years.
But I'm old enough to know AI and other things have replaced us at least half a dozen times in the last 40 years.
Yet we're still here being software engineers. And I expect to still be here in a dozen more years.
I’ll never forget this guy on X who said, “AI is replacing software engineers. We’re all cooked!”
I replied, “We’re not. You are.” 😂
Then he played the age card, telling me I was too young to understand and that he’d been in this industry longer than I’d been alive.
I just don’t see it that way…
We’re entering a whole new era of software development. And personally, I couldn’t be more excited about it.
One day, we’ll look back at how we used to build software and think, “How the hell did we put up with all that?”
All the boilerplate, plumbing, wiring, and countless hours spent debugging things that had nothing to do with the actual problem we were trying to solve.
I never forget the days I used to spend hours fixing broken tests. I don’t want to go back.
AI is changing the way we build software, freeing us to spend more time on what really matters: solving problems and building great products people actually want.
But here’s the thing. The better you understand software, the better you can guide AI. Knowing what to ask, how things fit together, and when something doesn’t make sense matters more than ever.
If you think software development is dead, you're welcome to believe that. Less competition for the rest of us. 😉
We’re just getting started.
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In today's episode of Coding Chats I talked to Dave Westgarth, head of delivery at a Databricks consultancy.
Dave shares his path from a psychology degree and McDonald's into tech, and they discuss why the Scrum Master role is so misunderstood, how it differs from a delivery ther needs to be technical.
We also talked about how AI is changing delivery work. Faster code just moves the bottleneck upstream, I argue there's no AI-specific skill you can't learn in a day, and engineering fundamentals are what make AI useful.
You can watch / listen to the full podcast here:
YouTube: youtube.com/@codingchats
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/59GU7gzyK…
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/cod…
Dave shares his path from a psychology degree and McDonald's into tech, and they discuss why the Scrum Master role is so misunderstood, how it differs from a delivery ther needs to be technical.
We also talked about how AI is changing delivery work. Faster code just moves the bottleneck upstream, I argue there's no AI-specific skill you can't learn in a day, and engineering fundamentals are what make AI useful.
You can watch / listen to the full podcast here:
YouTube: youtube.com/@codingchats
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/59GU7gzyK…
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/cod…
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I don't agree, but I can't think of a CEO that is as active in the developer community as @kskrygan. He's here seeking real feedback on what his company is doing.
If you like or liked the @jetbrains products and have suggestions tell him!
If you like or liked the @jetbrains products and have suggestions tell him!
JetBrains is so lost.
They've added a cursor-like full screen agent mode, but the puck is already moving onward. Always one step behind.
In the meantime, we could all use some help with markdown editing, huge diff views, summarization, change visualization, worktrees, git ould become a brilliant agentic dev companion tool. Instead, they chose to chase after being a shitty last-gen agentic dev tool.
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What are the tech events between now and the end of 2027 that you'll regret missing?
I was chatting with @arsh_goyal yesterday, and he suggested I should go to more events and meet more people.
It got me thinking about which events would be worth attending, not just for the talks, but for the interesting people you could meet.
So, I'm putting together my tech event calendar for the next 14 months.
Which events should be on it, from now until the end of 2027?
And more importantly, why are they worth attending?
I'd love your recommendations.
I was chatting with @arsh_goyal yesterday, and he suggested I should go to more events and meet more people.
It got me thinking about which events would be worth attending, not just for the talks, but for the interesting people you could meet.
So, I'm putting together my tech event calendar for the next 14 months.
Which events should be on it, from now until the end of 2027?
And more importantly, why are they worth attending?
I'd love your recommendations.
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CTO, Director of Engineering, Engineering Manager are titles you are given.
Leadership is something you do.
Leader is what you become when someone else believes in your vision enough to follow you.
A title gives you authority, but your actions earn you influence, and that's what people follow.
Leadership is something you do.
Leader is what you become when someone else believes in your vision enough to follow you.
A title gives you authority, but your actions earn you influence, and that's what people follow.
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I talked to Ben Howdle talks about the importance of identifying your own weaknesses as a first time CTO.
You can watch / listen to the full podcast here:
YouTube: lnkd.in/eJirKrXu
Spotify: lnkd.in/eNJw955r
Apple Podcasts: lnkd.in/epZnMjZz
Overcast: lnkd.in/eFNPGVvS
You can watch / listen to the full podcast here:
YouTube: lnkd.in/eJirKrXu
Spotify: lnkd.in/eNJw955r
Apple Podcasts: lnkd.in/epZnMjZz
Overcast: lnkd.in/eFNPGVvS
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Software engineers underestimate the importance of learning to sell!
A short clip from my interview with Ben Howdle author of The First Time CTO, the full episode is here: youtube.com/watch?v=G5G5EA…
A short clip from my interview with Ben Howdle author of The First Time CTO, the full episode is here: youtube.com/watch?v=G5G5EA…
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"something that keeps bothering me is how some people see slop as something that is happening to them, like they're some kind of helpless bystander powerless to do anything about it"
This is spot on. AI hasn't changed it, if you accepted slop before you'll still accept it.
"The standard you walk past is the standard you accept"
-- David Morrison
This is spot on. AI hasn't changed it, if you accepted slop before you'll still accept it.
"The standard you walk past is the standard you accept"
-- David Morrison
something that keeps bothering me is how some people see slop as something that is happening to them, like they're some kind of helpless bystander powerless to do anything about it
excuse me but you are a software engineer, you literally learned how to make sand think and make computers do your bidding?! and now you can't do anything about it? please
the 2 things you should know to cut through all the noise:
1. you need to give your agent a way to verify its own work (i just posted about this so won't rehash)
2. your codebase is memory
the 2nd is not new either, we have always had lint rules, compilers with good diagnostics and strong type systems, LSPs, etc to help us write better code. there is no difference when agents write the code instead, you just need more of them, and stronger ones.
forget rules and skills. you can add those later.
yes, your codebase is a form of memory to agents! agents love extending what already exists. so every nit and every annoyance you've ever seen, every mistake and bad pattern you observe from agents, needs to turn into a constraint, or the agents will just keep repeating those same mistakes like a virus in your code. then you keep observing and repeating this process until your codebase is locked down enough that even agents with little context can one shot a high quality PR.
an even better direction is to refactor/rewrite your code such that agent anti-patterns become categorically impossible. use type systems to your advantage, use libraries/frameworks that reduce the architectural search space, or heck, create your own framework like we did for grok bot and design high quality primitives and well thought out APIs
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