I realized recently the LLMs are calling bullshit on the moniker of engineer or programmer that I've bestowed on myself over the course of my career. The current LLMs are making it quite easy to seperate software design from implementation. I used to be firmly in the camp that one really needed to roll up their sleves, sit down with an editor and start banging away until the software evolved and coalesced around a solution.

I convinced myself that functional specs and detailed design documents were not needed because they wouldn't be kept in sync with the code. But the LLMs are essentially turning the synthesis of the code from those documents to a compilation step of sorts.

Now I must ponder the question, what portions of the acts of coding, designing and delivering a working product were the portions that bring me joy. I've been attempting to answer this question by making a concerted effort to delegate the coding to the LLMs and reviewing if the code conforms to the designs I've written down. This process is much closer to the historical engineering disciplines but I have to say, its not been easy.

My advice to the the more junior reading this. Experiment with different functional and design spec formats that best serve the LLMs and develop the skill of writing these and then managing the LLMs.

TLDR, the LLMs are giving the term Software Engineering actual meaning.