I think we all know what Agentic engineering is, the question is when should it not be used instead of classical engineering?
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What is agentic engineering?
91–100 of 109 posts
Re: What is agentic engineering?
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
And are you not seeing that level of responsibility?
I'm trying to demonstrate that in my own work, but from the comments I see in places like Hacker News there are a lot of people who aren't. I wrote a note about that here: https://simonwillison.net/guides/agentic-engineering-pattern...
Ragentic Engineering is when you curse at the LLM.
Re: What is agentic engineering?
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, if you defer all your coding decisions to agents, then you're not doing engineering at all. You don't say you're doing "contractor engineering" when you pay some folks to write your app for you. At that point, you are squarely in the management field.
If you're producing a technological artifact and you are ensuring it has certain properties while working within certain constraints, then in my mind you're engineering and it's a question of the degree of rigor. Engineers in the "hard engineering" fields (eg mechanical engineers, civil engineers) a rule don't build the things they design, they spend a lot of time managing/working with contractors.
I’m pretty sure engineers in those professions need to know the physical/mathematical properties of their designs inside and out. The contractors are not involved in that and have limited autonomy.
I would not want to drive over a vibe-coded bridge.
Re: What is agentic engineering?
#94Re: What is agentic engineering?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the borderline is when you take responsibility for the code, and stop blaming the LLM for any mistakes. That's the level of responsibility I want to see from people using LLMs in a professional context. I want them to take full ownership of the changes they are producing.
Sounds good, however the bar is probably too far and far too idealistic. The effects of vibecoding destroys trust inside teams and orgs, between engineers.
As would the effects of shipping unverified, untested code pre-agents existing. Bad quality will always erode trust.
The problem with LLM-based coding is that the speed it can generate code (whether good or bad) is much faster than before.
Re: What is agentic engineering?
#96As someone who works with real licensed engineers (electrical, civil), I wish we would use the term "agentic software engineering" to describe this. Omitting "software" here betrays a very SWE-centric mindset.
Agents are coming for the other engineering disciplines as well.
Re: What is agentic engineering?
#97The term feels broken when adhering to standard naming conventions, such as Mechanical Engineering or Electrical Engineering, where "Agentic Engineering" would logically refer to the engineering of agents
Lots of things already violate it. The normal Site Reliability Engineer isn’t building the tools for Site Reliability but rather applies the tools to other software.
Re: What is agentic engineering?
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're producing a technological artifact and you are ensuring it has certain properties while working within certain constraints, then in my mind you're engineering and it's a question of the degree of rigor. Engineers in the "hard engineering" fields (eg mechanical engineers, civil engineers) a rule don't build the things they design, they spend a lot of time managing/working with contractors.
> If you're producing a technological artifact and you are ensuring it has certain properties while working within certain constraints, then in my mind you're engineering This covers every level of management in tech companies.
Not really, upper levels of management are more concerned with strategic decisions, they aren't making sure certain invariants are upheld.
Re: What is agentic engineering?
#99I don't think we should be making this distinction. We're still engaged in software engineering. This isn't a new discipline, it's a new technique. We're still using testing, requirements gathering, etc. to ensure we've produced the correct product and that the product is correct. Just with more automation.
I think the automation makes a significant difference though. I'm building a tool that is self-improving, and I use "building" for a reason: I've written about 5 lines of it, to recover from early failures. Other than that, I've been reviewing and approving plans that the system has executed itself. Increasingly I'm not even doing that. Instead I'm writing requirements, reviewing high level specs, let the system generate its own work items and test plans, execute them, verify the test plan was followed. Sometimes I don't even read past the headline of the plan.
I've read a reasonable proportion of the code. Not everything is how I'd like it to be, but regularly I'll tell the system to generate a refactoring plan (with no details, that's up to the agent to figure out), and it does, and they are systematically actually improving the quality.
We're not quite there yet, but I plan to build more systems with it that I have no intention of writing code for.
This might sound like "just" vibe coding. But the difference to me is that there are extensive test plans, and a wide range of guard rails, a system that rewards gradually refining hard requirements that are validated.
Re: What is agentic engineering?
#100The premise is flawed: Now that we have software that can write working code ... While there are other points made which are worth consideration on their own, it is difficult to take this post seriously given the above.
If you haven't seen coding agents produce working code you've not been paying attention for the past 3-12 months.
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