Sri - Appreciate the very thoughtful post and it certainly sounds and feels like a golden age for Software Engineering with uninterrupted flow leading to higher degree of fulfillment!
As I reflect on the thoughts shared, I see 3 broad categories evolve in the future
1. AI-Native Future Apps
For applications that are not yet developed, with all the AI capabilities becoming available, can Product Owners/Architects declare the intent and have AI do the full SDLC pipeline? How would the role of of Architects and Engineers change in an AI native App Dev world?.. Would our role change from creators to validators or supervisors? Would the IDE experience in itself change radically? Would love to hear your take on it.
2. Current Apps supported by AI Assistants
This is the current set of App in Production that need significant SWE capability where I see lot of the empowering ideas mentioned applicable.
3. Legacy Apps like Mainframe systems
This could be an interesting space wherein AI could help massively in replatforming efforts because it can learn what context actually matters in production environment and feed it back to the replatforming efforts so we don't carry forward any unnecessary baggage.
It is clear we are at the cusp and a lot of us are simultaneously nervous+excited for the future.
Flow has been a key problem for way too long. AI is definitely helping to improve this problem for the software engineer. Remembering the days of the introduction of refactoring capabilities in IDEs. What can be done now is tremendous. I am just as excited about the future for our space!
Great post ! While i didn’t try Windsurf or Cline - I did have some experience with Cursor. I agree security source code scanning perhaps shifted left giving some competition to tools like Snyk, may be. In an enterprise world though, gating of these issues becomes lot more complex as opposed just being in advisory mode.
Sri - Appreciate the very thoughtful post and it certainly sounds and feels like a golden age for Software Engineering with uninterrupted flow leading to higher degree of fulfillment!
As I reflect on the thoughts shared, I see 3 broad categories evolve in the future
1. AI-Native Future Apps
For applications that are not yet developed, with all the AI capabilities becoming available, can Product Owners/Architects declare the intent and have AI do the full SDLC pipeline? How would the role of of Architects and Engineers change in an AI native App Dev world?.. Would our role change from creators to validators or supervisors? Would the IDE experience in itself change radically? Would love to hear your take on it.
2. Current Apps supported by AI Assistants
This is the current set of App in Production that need significant SWE capability where I see lot of the empowering ideas mentioned applicable.
3. Legacy Apps like Mainframe systems
This could be an interesting space wherein AI could help massively in replatforming efforts because it can learn what context actually matters in production environment and feed it back to the replatforming efforts so we don't carry forward any unnecessary baggage.
It is clear we are at the cusp and a lot of us are simultaneously nervous+excited for the future.
Wonderful narrative Sri. Swivel chair is a major concern for developers.
Flow has been a key problem for way too long. AI is definitely helping to improve this problem for the software engineer. Remembering the days of the introduction of refactoring capabilities in IDEs. What can be done now is tremendous. I am just as excited about the future for our space!
Great post ! While i didn’t try Windsurf or Cline - I did have some experience with Cursor. I agree security source code scanning perhaps shifted left giving some competition to tools like Snyk, may be. In an enterprise world though, gating of these issues becomes lot more complex as opposed just being in advisory mode.