Mostly agreed. In a previous life, I used to write code, then got Peter Principled upwards to the point where I "trusted" the engineers under me to do their job. Did I understand all the code my team wrote? Of course not. Even if I wanted to review all the code written by 20+ developers to the point where I could stay I understood it, there simply wasn't enough hours in the day to do so.
I figure what is happening is (human) software engineering as a discipline, at least on large scale projects, is rapidly and irreversibly mutating to software project management. But instead of managing teams of people, you're managing teams of agents. Where I disagree with your comment is in the assertion that everyone "can move one level up the system hierarchy." Some folks can't, so they'll stagnate. Welcome to the Peter Principle World.
> Even if I wanted to review all the code written by 20+ developers to the point where I could stay I understood it, there simply wasn't enough hours in the day to do so.
The difference of course being that you had 20+ developers who did understand it. With AI generated code no one has that understanding. The AI sure doesn't
> Some folks can't, so they'll stagnate.
And we have no answer for those people. Just "fuck you the world changed and you're being left behind"? Where exactly does that lead?
I figure what is happening is (human) software engineering as a discipline, at least on large scale projects, is rapidly and irreversibly mutating to software project management. But instead of managing teams of people, you're managing teams of agents. Where I disagree with your comment is in the assertion that everyone "can move one level up the system hierarchy." Some folks can't, so they'll stagnate. Welcome to the Peter Principle World.