Software Engineering in 2026

Note: No AI is used in writing this post.


Complexity of software vs. Efforts required graph

Graph of effort required against complexity of software. A simple TODO app and an Amazon clone sit low; the curve rises through a Jira-like app and steepens toward cancer-solving software or a breakthrough physics simulator.


AI Making many things a commodity - including creativity


The Jenga-tower framework

A tall wooden Jenga tower, slightly leaned, on a wooden floor

A new idea you can use to make AI create a report (like .md file) listing all the files in your codebase in a way, that describes what files are the most fundamental and what files are built on top of it. Like a Jenga-tower.

If you edit the files at the bottom, you’ll have to edit all the files on top of it. That’s the core idea. Obviously there are layers to this too, a Jenga tower is more linear and codebases can be much more tree-like. But having this idea to create an overview helped me a lot.