History repeats itself: Aerospace & AI-software-development

#ai #career #automation #software

The Analogy:-

When aircrafts were first being designed, they had to deal with the unpredictability that arose from working with fluids (that too, when fluid dynamics was not even a proper subject)
1920s-1930s: "Works most of the time"
When it did fail, invariably it was unexpected and it happened at the worst possible situation; we then end up in a mini disaster, if not worse!
Eventually, aircraft ENGINEERING, as a discipline, figured out how to systematically handle the chaotic nature of Air, ultimately delivering "deterministic-flights" even in the bad weather!!
All Aerospace-engineers turned into Systems-Integrators and/or into Simulation/Modeling people.

What does it mean for those of us developers who're struggling to survive this AI-armageddon?

The Challenges:

STANDARD CONTROLS & METRICS: Engineering may likely reassert itself into AI-only software-development, once we have globally well-understood and well-standardized metrics + controls, to track progress and to track quality of the work done by AI. if everyone's got their own standards, it's not going to be enough.
A BIT CLUELESS: If you listen to the famous names and what they're publishing on the various media, as of April 2026, we still have insufficient control on what the models do. I believe, we must seek 100% control. (Dare I say this? Just frequently enough, we sometimes have no clue re: "how/what" the AI did! Forget about "control").
GOING NOWHERE FAST: As someone who started a career with 3-yrs-long projects, I now ask all end-users: "I CAN COOK SO FAST NOW. BUT CAN YOU EAST FAST ENOUGH?". Let me answer on behalf of the end-users: "No!"

Survival Tips (part 1 of 2):-

STOP: Stop wasting time hoarding/curating prompts/templates. My own recent experience was that GitHub's CoPilot's CodeReview was FAR-superior to my own curated set of "PR Review prompts" (run across multiple agents); FYI: I had copied these from famous people's publications.
NEW FOCUS: Your career now is NOT to decide which model/framework works best. Focus instead on how you can capture metrics & trends, the change-impact measurements, the cost-estimates, etc .. especially for already-deployed apps.. .. to help others make those decisions.
Your career will ALSO be about GUARANTEEING / proving that the ROLLBACK in production, was 100% precise. What metrics are needed to provide such a guarantee, and how will you have them in place prior to starting the rollback?
With AI, prepare for rollbacks to be routine. My gut says: This is the 1st true engineering within the AI-world. SRE may need to adapt.
BEST TOOLS: Like a traditional engineer, your tools should be the best available: (1) best PR-review tool built & maintained by some corporation (2) best design-review built & maintained by some corporation (3) etc.. ..
Open Source simply can NEVER keep up with this mind-blowing pace of progress. So, focus on commercial-tools (hopefully those that'll "Not vendor-lock you forever").
MINDSET CHANGE: Start chanting "Can Not control what you do Not measure". Drink that "kool-aid". Believe in it.
You must truly believe that it is NOT engineering to just break-apart a prompt into "Role, Context, Objectives, Constraints & Communication-style".

Possibilities in the Future:-

SIMULATION/MODELING: Following the trajectory of the Aeroplane-industry, its quite likely that Engineering will be more "Simulation & Modeling" (of the problems and of the future-solutions), and less about actual software-development (see more below). True Visionaries are so rare! That's wonderful for our job-security! As, we get to have jobs to do modeling of endless scenarios for the clueless C-Suite.
PRODUCT-MANAGEMENT:- With AI "listening in" into all calls/meetings and with access to all information, it's certainly quite possible this role is no longer human! ☹️. Unless, .. .. like Steve Jobs and Henry Ford (as well-known examples), you know what the customers WILL want.
REQUIREMENTS-ELICITATION:- This is the MAKE-or-BREAK MOST-IMPORTANT aspect of software-development, that .. .. if AI somehow nails it, .. .. it will destroy all prospects for humans. As one possibility, the day that the employees have a CONSTANTLY ATTACHED AI, that knows everything about that person's role and a bit about their personal lives, .. that will be the day there will be no more IT-Dept. Google MAY soon achieve this in the context of the common-consumer. 99% of the time, end-users do NOT know what EXACTLY do they want. Hence my note above re: "never be able to eat fast enough". It takes a lot of time & effort by us humans, to elicit updated-requirements from a end-user.

Survival Tips (Part 2 of 2):-

Enroll in a local college re: "Simulation and Modeling". Become familiar with such terminology & tools

Sorry. I am Not able to predict whether "feature git-branches" with their own deployed tiers/environments (incl. freshly hydrated new databases/data-repos) counts as "Simulation and Modeling". Feel free to debate about the future.

Common Misconceptions about the Wright-brothers:-

For those who live out their liberal-arts degrees, and for those who don't give a sh*t, and for the uneducated, the Wright Brothers invented the plane! That's it.
There were many many people who actually "lifted off" quite a bit before the famous success of the Wright Brothers. Their problem? No one could replicate their success ever again.
From an engineering standpoint, the Wright Brothers spent years (perhaps close to a decade?), looking at it from a true engineering perspective. CONTROL. CONTROL. CONTROL. CONSISTENCY.
What was the reason the Wright brothers were soooooo obsessed with control & consistency? The one brother who was designing it, was sooooo concerned that his brother would get hurt --- in a TRADITIONAL sense of being brothers. It's a relationship that's hard to explain/understand in this world today. Perhaps it was due to the social / parental pressure back then. BTW, I'm old.

My view of the world today:-

We just FINALLY got past the "It's So Exciting! Another new hot-hot research paper was published. Can't wait to read it and discuss/debate it endlessly."
We're now in the phase:- "Throw it against the wall, see if it sticks" (Chaotic Experimentation)
Software-Authoring -versus- Software-development: Claude is PUBLICLY leading in the latter. I'm quite sure Google is doing the same internally too.

But, But .. you say ..

"AI is working so great !!"
- You must be in sales/marketing/general-media/porn.
- Words like "Quality" and "Guarantee/Warranty" never applied to your work.
- And never will.
- Appearances & Impressions do.
- Good for you.
- Enjoy!
"We're in the hockey stick part of the human evolution. It's different this time."
- Decades may shrink down to years or lesser. But, human-history does rhyme, even if it does not repeat.
"Nowadays. MVP and TTM have made the "brotherly relationships/objectives" irrelevant. Production is where testing is done / bugs are identified. So, we're unlikely to see consistency, and even less likely determinism."
- Unfortunately, I need to admit that this is a realistic possibility.

If you are a PRACTICING software-ENGINEER (emphasizing the words "practicing" & "engineer"), then you barely skimmed through this article. Even so, you understood everything here and .. perhaps have better insights!!
For all such folks, "L.F.G." !!

If you're more of a thinker/intellectual-elite, then you're more likely to debate this endlessly, perhaps even on some Dwarkesh podcast. Leave me alone.