[ Video ] Software Engineering Is Dead! Is It Really? – Dragos Roua

I’m fortunate enough to have witnessed a few key moments in our recent tech history. One of them is web 3, the dot com revolution. Back then, having a website was considered peak flex (in modern slang). I see something similar happening with AI agents, now, it seems equally fashionable. And, just as back then people predicted the end of many verticals, now other pundits are claiming that software engineering is dead. Some business models will die, that’s true. The most prominent is the monolithic App Store business. But new ones will emerge. The world will go on.

These thoughts – and handful of ramblings – are packed in a 5 minutes video I just published on my YouTube channel.

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Here are the main points:

• The website era rhymes with AI today. ~20 years ago, having a digital presence that worked while you slept felt unimaginable — then browsers, the internet, and websites exploded. We’re in a similar moment with LLMs and agents.
• Apocalyptic predictions rarely pan out. Back then, people said the world would never be the same. Most of daily life stayed familiar — even after a genuine technological breakthrough.
• Some models collapse; new ones emerge. Local newspapers, radio, and TV took hits. Influencers and digital creators rose in their place — some now reach audiences bigger than old television.
• Agents echo the old website promise. “Let my agent work overnight” is the same dream: something following your instructions, producing digital artifacts while you’re offline.
• Same hype cycle, new vocabulary. Software is dead. Engineers are dead. The world will never be the same. I’ve heard this before — and I don’t buy it this time either.
• One business model is cracking: the App Store. It’s drowning in vibe-coded submissions. Apple is rejecting apps as “spam” — including in niches where they already have plenty of similar apps.
• That’s an identity crisis for app stores. If an app store tells builders “we don’t need more apps like this,” it’s no longer really an app store — it’s a gatekeeper with an arbitrary ceiling.
• Apps aren’t dying — they’re mutating. I haven’t seen mobile apps as a category disappear. What’s changing is how they’re built, distributed, and judged.
• First movers usually aren’t the winners. Long-term survivors adapt, stay lean, and avoid bloat — just enough to ride out the earthquake, which may still be ~6 months out.
• The launch-day frenzy will fade. New models every few hours won’t matter forever. A few winners will settle in, life will look slightly different — and weekends will still be weekends.