The Pragmatic Engineer

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The third golden age of software engineering – thanks to AI, with Grady Booch

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Feb 4, 2026

Guest

Grady Booch

Grady Booch, pioneering software engineer and co-creator of UML, reflects on computing’s long arc. He traces three golden ages of software and why each arose from technical and human limits. He discusses AI’s role in a new era, why engineers remain essential, and which higher-level skills will matter next.

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INSIGHT

Software Engineering Is Systems Judgment

Software engineering is about balancing technical, economic, legal and ethical forces, not just writing code.
Grady Booch argues that this systems-level judgment cannot be fully automated by current AI.

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ANECDOTE

IBM's Abstraction Sparked The First Golden Age

The 1960s IBM move to a common instruction set decoupled software from hardware and launched a software industry.
That decision made software reusable and triggered the first golden age of software engineering.

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INSIGHT

Objects Replaced Pure Algorithms

The second golden age shifted the primary abstraction from algorithms to objects and classes.
Object-oriented design allowed tackling complexity by bundling data and behavior into reusable components.

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What is software engineering and its forces

01:05 • 4min

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First golden age: algorithmic abstraction

05:23 • 4min

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Software crisis and rising complexity

Defense, distribution, and UI innovation

14:45 • 3min

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Language design and formal methods

Second golden age: object abstractions

27:56 • 3min

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Platforms, open source, and services

31:04 • 9min

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Y2K, dotcom crash, and infrastructure stabilizing

AI's parallel history and winters

44:45 • 2min

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Third golden age: higher abstractions and agents

Will AI end software engineering? No

52:10 • 6min

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Response to Dario Amodei's claim

58:10 • 9min

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Which skills will become more important

01:06:52 • 3min

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Foundations to study: systems and cognition

01:09:40 • 5min

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Opportunities: imagination freed by abstraction

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In 'The Society of Mind', Marvin Minsky presents a revolutionary theory of how the human mind works. He describes the mind as a collection of simple, mindless agents that interact to produce complex cognitive functions. The book is composed of 270 self-contained essays divided into 30 chapters, each contributing to a unified theory of the mind. Minsky explores concepts such as language, memory, learning, consciousness, and the sense of self, offering a philosophical and computational perspective on intelligence. The theory posits that intelligence stems from the diversity and cooperation of these agents, rather than any single principle or formal system.

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• WorkOS – Everything you need to make your app enterprise ready.

—

Every few decades, software engineering is declared “dead” or on the verge of being automated away. We’ve heard versions of this story before. But what if it’s just the start of a new “golden age” of a different type of software engineering, like it has been many times before?

In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I’m joined once again by Grady Booch, one of the most influential figures in the history of software engineering, to put today’s claims about AI and automation into historical context.

Grady is the co-creator of the Unified Modeling Language, author of several books and papers that have shaped modern software development, and Chief Scientist for Software Engineering at IBM, where he focuses on embodied cognition.

Grady shares his perspective on three golden ages of computing since the 1940s, and how each emerged in response to the constraints of its time. He explains how technical limits and human factors have always shaped the systems we build, and why periods of rapid change tend to produce both real progress and inflated expectations.

He also responds to current claims that software engineering will soon be fully automated, explaining why systems thinking, human judgment, and responsibility remain central to the work, even as tools continue to evolve.

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Timestamps

(00:00) Intro

(01:04) The first golden age of software engineering

(18:05) The software crisis

(32:07) The second golden age of software engineering

(41:27) Y2K and the Dotcom crash

(44:53) Early AI

(46:40) The third golden age of software engineering

(50:54) Why software engineers will very much be needed

(57:52) Grady responds to Dario Amodei

(1:06:00) New skills engineers will need to succeed