Why Software Engineering Is Indispensable in the Age of Coding Agents

Abstract:Can AI make Software Engineering (SE) -- the discipline -- obsolete? And can it make software engineers -- the professionals -- redundant? This paper argues that the rise of capable AI coding agents makes SE and software engineers essential, not obsolete: the missing foundation without which AI-assisted development produces misleadingly plausible, unverifiable, and ultimately untrustworthy software. Three structural properties of large language models (probabilistic generation, agnosticism, and semantic statelessness) create a structural vacuum that no amount of training can eliminate. Filling it requires four knowledge levers: methodological knowledge, domain knowledge, design choices, and process choices. All four must be reified as persistent artifacts, and each requires the software engineer as methodologist, mediator, and custodian.

Accepted for publication in Communications of the ACM. 5 pages

Software Engineering (cs.SE); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)

arXiv:2610.10226 [cs.SE]

(or arXiv:2610.10226v1 [cs.SE] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.10226 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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