Will AI Replace Software Engineers?
AI has taken the programming world by storm in 2026.
In just a matter of months, almost all the programmer friends I know have started using AI for their daily tasks. This brought about two conflicting feelings: “Wow, this is incredibly cool,” and “Damn, I’m going to lose my job.” It’s odd to experience so much optimism and pessimism at the exact same moment.
The recent Block layoff was the event that truly shook the community: 40% of the employees at a well-funded, profitable company were laid off, allegedly due to “AI automating their jobs.” Is the age of fully autonomous AI programming really here? What’s the point of human engineers when artificial intelligence is getting smarter by the day?
Does this mean Computer Science no longer matters? Will software engineering as a profession be entirely gone in a few short years?
Probably not.