Product designer and UX Planet editor-in-chief Nick Babich describes software development shifting from production to direction. The design version is familiar by now: as interface production gets cheaper, the work beyond the artifact is defining the right problem, directing agents, evaluating output, and owning the result. Babich traces the same shift in software:

Software development as manual code production is dying.

Software development as translating detailed tickets into predictable implementation is dying.

Software development as a protected technical craft that non-programmers cannot access is dying.

But software engineering is evolving into something broader:

Problem definition + architecture + agent orchestration + verification + product judgment + accountability

This changes the role of the developer.

The most valuable skill is no longer the ability to write code.

It is the ability to define the right problem, provide agents with the right context, evaluate their decisions, and verify that the final result actually works.

Software developers are becoming software creators.

I agree. Replace code with interface production and developer with designer, and Babich could be describing our profession. But there’s a problem both fields share: judgment is built by doing the low-stakes work AI now handles.

Junior developers were historically hired to complete simple implementation tasks such as:

• Build a basic interface;
• Write repetitive tests;
• Fix small bugs;

and these tasks allow them to learn from experienced colleagues and grow professionally.

But in 2026, these tasks are precisely the tasks coding agents handle best.