The Future of Software Engineering: Operational Excellence and SRE as AI Makes Code Generation Cheaper
By
Swizec
An everything bagel for the brain. Substantive, layered, well-seasoned.
Summary
The article argues that as AI and automation make code generation cheaper and more accessible, the real value in software engineering shifts from writing code to operational excellence and long-term system maintenance. The author contends that while AI coding assistants can handle basic programming tasks, the complex work of keeping systems running reliably over time—Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)—will become increasingly important. The piece draws parallels to the no-code and spreadsheet era, suggesting that as foundational tasks become commoditized, engineering expertise in operations, reliability, and system evolution becomes the competitive advantage.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledWhen code gets cheap operational excellence wins.
Anyone can build a greenfield demo, but it takes engineering to run a service.
Writing code was always the easy part of this job. The hard part was keeping your code running for the long time.
Software engineering is programming over time. It's about how systems change.
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