Emilio Carrión
Build the road, don't run the marathon
My personal manifesto on the future of software engineering. Not an analysis. A direction.
I've spent weeks trying to write this post. I started it three times and deleted it each time because it sounded like something I'd already said.
Which makes sense. I've been writing for months about how AI is changing software engineering. About the opaque code already running in production. About the heuristics seniors can't explain. About why verification is the new core work. About why that verification needs infrastructure, not discipline. But all of that was loose pieces. Diagnoses. Concrete solutions to concrete problems.
What I hadn't written was the thing that connects all of it. The underlying question: where is this profession headed? Not tomorrow, not next week. In three, five, ten years.
This is as close as I have to an answer. It's not an analysis. It's a personal manifesto. My bet.
This is my personal manifesto on the future of software engineering. Read the full version at /manifesto.
Related articles
Operating AI is easy. Directing it is the craft.
When everyone uses AI every day, mastering the tool stops being a differentiator. What matters is the stance you take toward it: operating or directing. And no agent puts its name on the line for you.
The seven unwritten engineering laws AI is making more expensive
This week I watched a teammate ship nine PRs in a single day. Solid work, AI-assisted. Speed is what we celebrate, but the unwritten rules of engineering, the ones you only learn by breaking them, now charge you sooner and bigger. The seven laws, and how AI changes the math on every one of them.
The DNA of software wasn't a concept. It was 24 files.
Three weeks ago I argued that code was going to become disposable, and what would matter is the DNA of the software. I locked myself in to check whether that idea was actually writable. What came out: 24 files, two regenerations for less than a euro each, a public repo, and a lot of clarity about what harness engineering still doesn't solve.
