[prerok]

But... software engineering was never about the boiler plate. Or adding the extra parameter.

It was about knowing how to fit the new use case into an existing code base, respecting the architecture, and sometimes rearchiteting the solution. How easy the latter was is really dependent on whether the code/arcitecture respected the low coupling, high cohesion principle.

Now, some of this can be coerced into LLMs but it takes work and careful study of the changes. Sometimes they get it right, many times they do not. So, you have to go back and forth with them. If you know what they should have produced.

SWE is far from dead. We just let too much slop into the codebase because we're overwhelmed by it and not incentivized by leadership to care. Code quality will likely drop to the point where even the leadership will notice and it will normalize again. There's nothing like a high profile customer calling out a problem that was vibe coded. It has started already and will be happening more and more.

Don't worry, the hype will be over in some time.