Is Software Engineering ‘Cooked’? The Future Of Development Post AI

InnovationEnterprise TechIs Software Engineering ‘Cooked’? The Future Of Development Post AIByTim Keary,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Tim Keary is a reporter covering enterprise AI adoption.Follow AuthorApr 27, 2026, 12:22pm EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Software engineers working in an open office spacegettyAI has changed coding forever. Just last month, Sam Altman, cofounder and CEO of OpenAI, posted a thank-you note to developers on X marking a massive shift in the industry. “I have so much gratitude to people who wrote extremely complex software character-by-character. It already feels difficult to remember how much effort it really took. Thank you for getting us to this point," the post said. The implication of the post was that the days of manual coding were coming to an end. A new generation of AI-driven tools like Claude Code, Cursor and Codex are now capable of generating code from scratch. Now, many up and coming developers are seeing less demand for their skills. According to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York study released in 2025, fresh computer science graduates are facing unemployment rates of 6.1% to 7.5%, more than double that of biology and art history majors. As AI begins to automate code creation, many are starting to ask, is software engineering “cooked”? The Software Engineer Role Today The future of software engineering has been a frequent topic of discussion among AI leaders. In February 2026, Boris Cherney, creator and head of Anthropic’s Claude Code, said that the software engineer title is going to start going away by the end of the year and “it’s going to be painful for a lot of people.” His comments align with Dario Amodei, cofounder and CEO of Anthropic who predicted at the World Economic Forum that “we might be 6-12 months away from models doing all of what software engineers do end-to-en...