The Engineer in the Machine: Why AI Agents Do Not Replace Developers
The prevailing narrative in boardrooms across the EU is that the cost of software development is about to collapse. The logic seems sound: if a Large Language Model (LLM) can write a function, a class, or an entire module in seconds, the need for a human to type those characters into a text editor disappears. The conclusion drawn is often that the headcount of the engineering team can be reduced proportionally to the speed of the AI. This is a category error. It confuses the act of typing code