Beyond Autocomplete: How Generative AI is Reshaping Software Engineering

Generative AI is transforming software development at an unprecedented pace. Early tools like GitHub Copilot acted as supercharged autocomplete, but today’s innovations—such as Bolt and v0—enable developers to build entire applications through prompts alone. Meanwhile, AI-powered IDEs like Cursor are embedding conversational and agentic AI directly into the development workflow. Many of these advancements mirror trends in AI model development itself, with open-source projects driving rapid innovation. But as these tools become more capable, we must ask: What does it mean to be a software engineer in 2025? This talk will explore the current AI tooling landscape, comparing their strengths and limitations. Through live demos and practical examples, we'll see how these tools can enhance development workflows across various tasks. Finally, we'll look ahead—how will the role of software engineers evolve as these tools grow more powerful? While some fear that AI threatens the very existence of the industry, I don’t believe that’s the future we’re heading toward. However, significant changes are coming, and the time to prepare is now.