Software engineering isn't dying to AI — it's eating the whole economy
GregCook2011 · x · 2026-10-18
A debate between fchollet and Aaron Levie on AI automation of software engineering:
- fchollet: there are more software engineers than in 2025 and demand is growing; they work harder than ever, yet agents write 100% of the code; companies' bottom lines typically aren't budging. His takeaway: think in systems — automating one part creates friction and moves the bottleneck elsewhere.
- Levie: the biggest misread was assuming the world only needed a fixed amount of software. Since agents can use tools, write software on the fly and process data like humans (but faster), we can now throw software at problems that were never reasonably digitizable — making engineering more central to the economy, from bank trading to life sciences.
Both sides converge on one point: AI agents change what's worth engineering, not whether engineers matter.
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