Even If AI Executes Flawlessly, Engineering Is Still About Debugging the Spec
lemire · x · 2026-09-08
Responding to the question of what engineers will do when AI writes code, the author invokes Brooks' 1986 insight: even perfect program verification only proves a program meets its specification — the real essence of building software is debugging the specification itself.
Engineering, he argues, is not command execution but design: deciding what to build and how. You can outsource design to AI, but that assumes AI knows what needs to be built. Does it?
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