Colby Aley retweeted
The biggest misread of anyone predicting the end of software engineering was imagining that the world only needed a certain amount of software, and bringing automation to the field would reduce the need for labor.
Exactly the opposite is happening where essentially most things are actually turning into software. Because agents can use tools, work with computers, write software on the fly, and process data like humans (but far faster), we can now throw “software” at problems that never could reasonably be digitized before.
What that leads to is the role of engineering taking on greater importance in the economy, because we can now engineer far more systems and processes than were possible before.
If you’re a bank trying to do new forms of trading, engineers are often your first bet. If you are in life sciences, you expect more and more research and lab work to be engineering centric. If you’re in manufacturing, you’re trying to automate more of the supply chain, all that is engineering. More and more work is shaped like software problems.
Yes we’re not going to be coding manually in the future. But almost everything will be code, which means those that understand it are in a fantastic position.
Some observations about the "total" automation of software engineering:
1. There are more software engineers now than in 2025, and demand is growing.
2. Software engineers have never worked harder than they do now.
3. They largely don't write code anymore, agents write ~100% of the code.
4. The bottom line of the companies that employs these engineers and agents (i.e. the terminal purpose of all this code) is typically not budging as a result of AI adoption.
This is why you have to think in terms of systems. Automating one aspect of a system creates its own friction and moves the bottlenecks elsewhere.
So how are we feeling about buttons inside buttons on the web these days? I've seen two recent examples but can't get on board.
Some buildings will omit the 13th floor from elevators, and some will omit a dozen plus at random, and this is just a normal thing that's somewhat common.
ALT Excerpt from the 30 Hudson Yards Wikipedia entry listing the floors of the building, noting that "Floors 80-99 do not exist".
that feeling when you have to write a commit message and pull request title/description for a trivial one line code change
After nearly two years of cancelled trips, celebrations, and constant worrying over either being too cautious or not cautious enough, finally slipping up and getting COVID just feels so… deflating.
I do not understand dreams. My dream last night was that my friend published a book and was begging me and all their other friends to buy enough copies to make the NYT bestseller list. ???
Portlanders: Wow our street racing problem has really gotten out of hand.
Also Portlanders: We should shut down the race track where people can race legally.
wweek.com/news/2021/09/01/fo…
Subscribed to @theinformation a year ago, rarely read it, then without any notification they charged me for another year. Emailed to cancel and their support tells me that they can't do refunds.
My advice to early career engineers continues to be: read through as many closed pull requests and code reviews as possible.
This is a great way to learn how your project works, how to make changes to it, and what sorts of feedback you might expect to get along the way.
Colby Aley retweeted
the best engineers i've worked with are not ones who write "great" code (whatever that means!) but instead are the ones who are extremely skilled communicators.
Colby Aley retweeted
"Parler was banned" lie must end. It wasnt. Parler was told by Amazon/Apple/Google to comply with TOS by moderating, removing violence threats. Refused. A, A & G could be liable for violence if they allow Parler to violate TOS. Parler thought it deserved to break rules. It doesnt