September 25, 2026
You can delegate code to AI, but system choices stay with the engineer: Booch compared AI to compilers
On Sep 25, Grady Booch drew the line: AI can write code, but it does not decide what software is needed. He compared modern AI to compilers, which had long written better code than he could.
Gergely Orosz
@gergelyorosz
Grady has lived through several technological shifts: microprocessors, the internet, mobile devices, and now AI. He says that when everything changes, some things in software development stay the same. He also believes that AI is bringing us into a new golden age of software development.
In my career, compilers have always generated better code that I ever could have. I find this to be increasingly so with contemporary AIs. But you know what neither can do better than me? Knowing what software to write, what shape it should take, and what I want it to do. The entire history of software engineering has been one of rising levels of abstraction. This is how it was, how it is now, and how it shall be in the fullness of time.
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Compilers once took manual work with machine instructions away from engineers. Now Claude and similar tools handle part of the refactoring, reorganization, and fragile infrastructure work. Booch himself uses LLMs for Swift, Python, PHP, and JavaScript.
The choice remains human. Booch calls architecture the decisions that change a system's form and behavior. AI speeds up assembling the pieces, while the engineer's work shifts to choosing and connecting them.
Booch considers the current period the third golden age of software development, which began even before Claude.
