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.