State of Software Engineering in 2026: A Reality Check Beyond the AI Hype

Three and a half years ago, Matt Welsh, PhD and former Google engineer, published " The End of Programming " in Communications of the ACM and declared that classical computer science was over. The meteor had hit. Engineers were the dinosaurs. The state of software engineering in 2026, he implied, would look nothing like what came before.

He was half right.

I've spent 14+ years building software systems, leading engineering teams, and shipping products. What I see in mid-2026 is messier than any of the hot takes predicted. AI didn't kill software engineering. But it did reshape what "being a good engineer" means in ways that matter. The developers who ignored this shift are struggling.…