About a months ago, I attended a tech demo at a Vancouver meetup. One presenter showcased a “turnkey” website generator that promised to take a few text prompts and deploy a fully functional app to a cluster in 15 minutes.

To make it interesting, he crowdsourced an idea from the audience and settled on building a chess.com clone with three simple requirements:

  1. Users can play chess against the computer.
  2. Users can play chess against each other.
  3. The system can teach users to play.

He clicked Generate. Forty minutes later, the system deployed a website that looked like chess.com—but none of the links worked. The play function was missing. You couldn’t play chess with anyone, human or AI. And the “learning” feature didn’t exist.

Why People Still Think “Software = Code”

Watching this, I kept asking myself: why do even tech professionals still assume software engineering is just coding?

It’s like asking an AI to write The Lord of the Rings—a 455,000-word trilogy—using a 200-word prompt. Everyone knows how absurd that sounds, yet people expect software to emerge from a one-click command.

How an Expert Would Actually Use AI

If an experienced author used AI to help write a trilogy, they’d start by:

  • Defining the genre and tone
  • Designing the world and its rules
  • Creating the characters and their motivations
  • Structuring the story with clear narrative arcs

Only then would they use AI for smaller tasks—outlining chapters, generating dialogue, proofreading drafts. The author remains in control of the creative process; AI serves as an assistant, not a replacement.

Software Engineering Works the Same Way

Software engineers don’t just write code. We solve problems with technology. Writing code is maybe 20–25% of the work. The rest is the full software development lifecycle:

  • Understanding user and business needs
  • Designing scalable, secure architectures
  • Testing, integrating, and deploying
  • Maintaining and improving systems over time

That’s the real craft.

The claim that “AI will replace programmers” is marketing hype targeted at business leaders who don’t understand how software is built. Those who do understand quietly integrate AI into their workflows to accelerate value creation—not to skip the fundamentals.

Where AI Actually Fits

The industry is starting to see the plateau. AI isn’t replacing engineers, but it’s amplifying those who know how to use it. The key is sequencing:
master the fundamentals first, then layer AI intelligently on top.

Final Thought

AI is an amplifier, not a substitute. Success doesn’t come from pressing “Generate.” It comes from understanding the system you’re building, designing it well, and applying AI with precision and purpose.