Descriptions:
Grady Booch, co-creator of UML and longtime IBM Fellow, joins The Pragmatic Engineer to argue that AI is ushering in the third golden age of software engineering rather than ending it. Drawing on experience stretching back to the 1970s — including work on missile systems at Vandenberg Air Force Base and the Apollo program — Booch traces the field through its first two golden ages: the era of structured programming and the rise of object-oriented design, which he helped define alongside Ivar Jacobson and James Rumbaugh.
The conversation covers why coding has always been just one component of software engineering, with the deeper work lying in balancing technical, economic, and ethical forces. Booch directly addresses Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s widely circulated claim that AI will automate software engineering within 12 months, offering a pointed historical rebuttal rooted in how the profession has adapted through every prior abstraction shift.
This is essential listening for any engineer trying to separate signal from panic about AI’s impact on the profession. Booch’s argument — that rising abstraction levels consistently expand what engineers build rather than eliminate who builds it — provides rare historical grounding for a debate that often generates more heat than clarity. Host Gergely Orosz draws out specific mechanisms behind each golden age, making the episode as analytically useful as it is reassuring.
📺 Source: The Pragmatic Engineer · Published February 04, 2026
🏷️ Format: Interview
