Re:Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
by snvzz on Tuesday May 12, 2026 @02:52AM
(#48105059)
That conversation seems like he was covertly teaching you about linked lists.
Re:Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
by mecHacker on Tuesday May 12, 2026 @10:18AM
(#48108675)
Or perhaps a peek into how fast the Software-engineering is changing that what works for you now may be irrelevant in future, and hence be prepared to be adaptive!
Re:Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
by gbro3n on Wednesday May 13, 2026 @07:07AM
(#48120381)
I think it's going to be a shift in skill set, like the constant change that has gone before. I've always primarily considered by self an application developer, but of late I've become more software architect, more devops, more tester. Software engineering skills always leaked into these domains before AI, I think it's just a shift in the time spent there now we're not manually writing so much code. And shipping is STILL hard. I've moved my focus to retooling - consolidating much of my workflow in a tool I'm working on https://www.agentkanban.io - A remote kanban board with agent harness integration (Github CoPilot currently) and context management.
On like my fourth day he said “now I’m going to teach you the thing that helped me the most in my career…” I waited, ready for the received wisdom. And he said “always number your punch cards so if you drop them they will be easy to put back into order”. I was upset. We were long past the point where punch cards were in use. And then he said “I said what would help _me_ the most, not what would help _you_. Software is always changing”.
I’ve thought about that a lot lately.