The Software Engineering Identity Crisis
March 28, 2025
To understand this identity crisis, we need to look at how deeply the craft of coding has shaped who we are. At its core, writing code is about mastery and control – skills we’ve spent years perfecting. Modern programming languages are much higher-level than those of days gone by, but they still require deep technical understanding. Few developers today deal with the nitty-gritty of pointers and memory management, yet we still take pride in knowing how things work under the hood. Even as frameworks do more heavy lifting, we’ve maintained our identity as artisans who understand our tools intimately.
Programming today is much more about stitching together APIs, frameworks, and libraries in creative ways to build something meaningful. In fact, recent research at Google suggests that creativity in software engineering centres on the concept of clever reuse over pure novelty. This makes sense to me – I’ve often commented that we’re all just ‘integration’ engineers nowadays, really.
Source: The Software Engineering Identity Crisis – Annie Vella
Annie Vella explores how the advent of AI coding assistants is reshaping the role of software engineers. Traditionally, engineers have identified as builders, deriving satisfaction from hands-on coding and problem-solving.
However, AI tools are shifting this dynamic, transitioning engineers from creators to orchestrators—roles that resemble management more than craftsmanship. This evolution challenges the core identity of software engineers, as they find themselves overseeing AI-generated code rather than directly crafting it. Vella highlights the irony that, while the industry has long emphasized that software engineering encompasses more than just coding, the increasing reliance on AI may diminish the hands-on aspects that many engineers cherish.
She underscores the importance of adaptability, suggesting that engineers must navigate this transformation by balancing their technical expertise with emerging skills in AI orchestration.
