Is CS the New Art Degree?

The hard parts of CS were never algorithms or coding, although we still like to pretend they are. The hard part is understanding and coordinating multiple, disparate systems -- each with their own rules, APIs, languages, deployments, etc.

A case in point is Microsoft's recent problem launching Flight Simulator 2024, a product where they own the front end hardware, the game studio, and the back end cloud provider. No amount of AI could coordinate and fix what went wrong there, nor even prevent it from happening.

This is the challenge in software development, and as we add more systems and layers with LLMs and RAG, the need for high-level, human understanding will only increase.