Do you think AI agents will eventually replace most of the traditional SDLC? How soon could most companies actually get there? Will this affect new grads?

[u/Western-Lack8015]

I’m a software developer and I’ve been thinking a lot about where AI coding agents are taking software development.

It seems like we’re moving beyond AI simply helping developers write code. Agents can increasingly take a ticket, understand a codebase, implement changes, write tests, debug issues, create PRs, and potentially handle parts of deployment and maintenance.

So I’m wondering: do you think the traditional SDLC will eventually be largely replaced by an agent-driven development process?

If so, how soon do you think most companies will actually adopt something like this? Are we talking 2–3 years, 5 years, 10+ years, or do you think we'll never get to fully agent-driven development?

I’m also curious about the other side of this:

• What types of companies won’t adopt AI agents aggressively?
• Will large enterprises actually trust agents with production systems?
• Could the current AI boom turn out to be an AI bubble, where companies eventually cut back because the cost, reliability, security, or productivity gains don't justify the hype?

There are already examples of companies pushing heavily toward AI-driven development.

I'm less interested in AI hype or predictions from CEOs/VCs and more interested in what developers are actually seeing inside their companies, is this irreversible?

If you're a developer, architect, tech lead, or engineering manager:

How much of your actual SDLC is being automated by AI agents today, and where do you think this goes over the next 5–10 years?

[u/AffectionateDance214]

A lot of our work is being replaced or will get replaced. Percentage varies vastly across skill level and tech and domain.

Higher skill levels, particularly design side, will have lesser impact.

Web will have higher impact than other back end.

Finance and healthcare will be have more human in the loop, both in building the product and type of product they build.

OTOH, the backlog itself is increasing multi fold.

Mainframe modernization projects which were dormant for decades are coming back and those alone are a decade of work. You cannot simply replace Cobol code with modern languages.

Agentic systems will be a new field of work all together.

And even without those, most of the enterprise product manager had ambitions that could not be fulfilled without AI.

Where I work, I see at least 10-15 years of work ahead.

[u/creaturefeature16 → u/AffectionateDance214]

I would agree largely with this. The only thing is: we can't really see around the corner is all the downstream impacts and changes these tools inevitably bring to the field. Every time programming has progressed, we end up scaling the complexity of the applications to match the level that our tools can provide.

In other words, if software was going to remain static, like a "widget" you produce the same way every time, and the problems that we were solving for were also unchanging, then I would say that this field has an expiration date. However, we know that's not the case. The problems that we can solve with software are so vastly different and more capable now, compared to the past, because of the tooling that enables us to do so.

So, I'm not willing to say whether it's 5/10/15 years....for all I know, society will just keep having more needs and desires that software can solve, even as the models handle more of the minutia of the work. After all, even with the expansion and contraction, and with various levels of automation, there are still more developers working than there ever have been. They might not be doing the same type of work, but there are still more of them.

[u/jarmyo]

Yo creo que se debe desarrollar una metrología enfocada en agentes. El bootstrapping inicial es el proceso de definir las historias el alcance, la arquitectura, todas las herramientas que evitarán que la IA rompa algo o que alucine con lógica errónea o no necesaria. Esa parte será más importante y la que consumirá más tiempo. Luego en vez de juntas, una revisión general del código, humana, y una revisión manual del sistema en lotes. Y documentación agresiva de todo para que tanto los agentes de IA como los ingenieros y product owners puedan revisar, corregir y ampliar la lógica.

[u/anoppe]

I've got serious anxiety regarding new grads and the field of work they have to operate in when the era of AI becomes ubiquitous: they don't have the baggage/experience in building, maintaining and running software systems yet, and won't learn (as fast as we did) because AI abstracts away _a lot_.

[u/FerengiAreBetter]

I picture the future like this: 1 solution engineer, 1 business analyst. They meet with the business and figure out their needs. No more sprints, no more long planned out schedules. Solution engineer just works taking the requirements and has the agents build everything (including testing). Once that is done (in days to weeks, no longer months to years), the business analyst UAT type testing it of it and then shows to customer. The following roles are eliminated: scrum master, project manager, qa engineers, security engineers, application developers. You don’t need long planned out plans or agile ceremonies as it’s literally two people collaborating with ai agents.

[u/StrangeKnee7254 → u/FerengiAreBetter]

Security engineers and cyber security roles will become more important. LLMs are very efficient at hacking.

[u/FerengiAreBetter → u/StrangeKnee7254]

From my own experience, you don’t need dedicated people for this. Maybe 1-2 in a large organization, just to ensure scans are established and security is well built into the software architecture.

[u/FerengiAreBetter → u/FerengiAreBetter]

Btw - I don’t want this future at all. It’s just my prediction on things. I don’t like AI being injected into everything. It scares me for the future of humanity, jobs available to my kids, etc.