There’s something ironic here. For decades, we dreamed of semi-automating software development. CASE tools, UML, and IDEs all promised higher-level abstractions that would "let us focus on the real logic."

Now that LLMs have actually fulfilled that dream — albeit by totally different means — many devs feel anxious, even threatened. Why? Because LLMs don’t just autocomplete. They generate. And in doing so, they challenge our identity, not just our workflows.

I think Colton’s article nails the emotional side of this: imposter syndrome isn’t about the actual 10x productivity (which mostly isn't real), it’s about the perception that you’re falling behind. Meanwhile, this perception is fueled by a shift in what “software engineering” looks like.

LLMs are effectively the ultimate CASE tools — but they arrived faster, messier, and more disruptively than expected. They don’t require formal models or diagrams. They leap straight from natural language to executable code. That’s exciting and unnerving. It collapses the old rites of passage. It gives power to people who don’t speak the “sacred language” of software. And it forces a lot of engineers to ask: What am I actually doing now?