Normware: The Decline of Software Engineering
There’s a common refrain that “AI won’t replace software engineers”, often with the resolution, “you’ll be replaced by software engineers that use AI”, implying that AI will be used to make software engineers more productive and efficient. I argue that software engineers will be replaced by normies, non-engineers (accountants, lawyers, etc.) that are empowered to create their own software to solve their own problems.
I don’t think that we’re close to automating software engineering. But what if we simply didn’t need software engineers?
I envision a world where AI tools & no code tools enable normies to create, normware, software created by anyone to solve their own problems. To some extent, it’s been happening for decades. But now it’s possible to easily make good normware.
There are a lot of job disciplines that write code but aren’t software engineers. The first non-engineer coder I worked with was a computational linguist. He was a linguist, definitely not a software engineer, but he did write a lot of Python. I also worked with a game artist, who was clearly an artist, but whose medium was code (and visual design). I’ve since worked with dozens of professions that are comfortable writing code but aren’t software engineers.
