AI didn't solve coding—it exposed what software engineering really is

"Coding is solved" misses the point

Every few weeks, someone declares that coding is solved. If they mean turning a well-specified problem into runnable code, they're increasingly right. But was writing runnable code ever the whole problem? Language models have made implementation dramatically cheaper, shifting the bottleneck to understanding business problems, navigating organizational context, and making sound decisions within existing systems. This article argues that software engineering has always been more than coding, and AI is revealing the layers above implementation that truly matter.