Agentic AI Is Quietly Replacing Developers
Discover how agentic AI is transforming software development from manual coding to intelligent automation.
Photo by Arnold Francisca on Unsplash
For decades, elegant code has been the hallmark of great software development — code that is streamlined, efficient, well-documented, reusable and expertly crafted. Early in my career, I was trained to prioritize writing tools and program generators over directly writing programs. This approach led to my involvement in numerous innovative initiatives that automated software modernization and improved productivity. By developing tools that generated transpilers, we were able to modernize millions of lines of code efficiently.
Today, generative AI models can create code from human language, making development more intuitive. It’s not surprising that concepts like vibe coding, which emphasizes intuition, aesthetics and the experiential impact of code, have gained traction. Though despite the expansion of low-code and no-code systems, most software is still crafted by engineers.
How Agentic AI Is Revolutionizing Software Development
With the rapid evolution of AI, from traditional AI to generative AI and now agentic AI, the focus is shifting from merely coding logic to automating the entire software development process. Automated testing, continuous documentation, automated pull requests and CI/CD systems, and AI-driven performance and security issue tracking and patching are showing great promise.
Building on these advancements, modern IT systems — including on-premises, hybrid cloud and superscalar environments—offer opportunities beyond simple reporting and analysis. These systems enable advanced problem detection, localization, correction, optimization, resilience and prevention, all facilitated by modern AI technologies.
For example, our clients use IBM’s suite of automation products to leverage both traditional and generative AI to transform raw data into intelligent systems. This powerful combination enhances IT operations by enabling sophisticated, data-driven solutions across the entire technology stack.
Agentic AI takes this a step further by executing tasks independently. Instead of writing code, it can handle the elements of building and running software automatically. This allows engineers to design AI teams where individual AI agents specialize in different tasks but collaborate to validate, refine and improve solutions.
These agents, powered by large language models and other AI systems, can communicate, share data and iteratively enhance their outputs. This continuous cycle of problem-solving will support correctness, scalability and efficiency.
Ultimately, the true engineering excellence of the future will lie in elegant automation, driven by the capabilities of advanced AI systems.
The Rise of Automation-First Development
This paradigm shift brings new opportunities and challenges for IT leaders. They will need to address key questions, such as: How can they encourage their team to use AI to achieve end-to-end automation? How can they ensure that the right controls are in place to enhance efficiencies and unlock innovation, rather than creating new problems? What tools and experiences can facilitate AI integration earlier in the software development life cycle?
3 Steps to Pivot Your Team from Code to Automation
1. Focus on Outcomes, Not Lines of Code
To achieve excellence in automation, shift your focus from the amount of code written to the number of processes automated and time saved. Implement metrics that measure these outcomes to track progress effectively. Create a culture that relies on data and experimentation to drive decision-making. Encourage engineers to think about how automation, especially with AI, can improve the speed and scalability of their work, rather than just focusing on the technical details. Promote a culture where automation is seen as a way to enhance and support the team, rather than replace it.
Last year, a small team at IBM consisting of experienced and newly hired product developers took over code repositories that contained approximately 750 JavaScript files without any documentation. The team’s goal was to figure out what the code was and exactly what it did.
To start, the team members created a proof of concept that used watsonx Code Assistant to document about 1,000 lines of code across nine different files. This allowed them to understand and document the content of each file in seconds, resulting in a time savings of over 90% for this specific task.
The time saved with this specific task has the potential to scale up into other use cases across the enterprise and culminate in thousands of hours saved.
2. Build with Automation-First Principles
Integrate automation into the core development workflow from the start. Encourage teams to automate deployment, testing, and monitoring as a regular part of their development process. Utilize AI-powered development assistants to speed up the creation of high-quality software systems. Prioritize low-code and no-code solutions for repetitive tasks, freeing up engineers to focus on high-value work and boosting overall efficiency and innovation.
For example, Ensono, a global managed service provider, leveraged IBM watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed to consolidate the company’s automation platform, perform direct database migrations, and establish a single source of truth for its Ansible content.
This streamlined approach allowed Ensono to complete 28 million tasks and save developers more than an estimated 100,000 hours in just one year, significantly enhancing client incident response, applications performance and overall efficiency.
3. Develop AI-Ready Skills and Mindsets
Transform developers into automation engineers by focusing on how AI and automation tools can augment their expertise. Invest in AI and automation training to help teams build expertise in AI-driven development, observability, and self-healing systems. Encourage cross-functional collaboration between IT, operations and business teams to ensure automation aligns with strategic goals. Establish a feedback loop to encourage continuous iteration and improvement of automation strategies.
From Developer to Automation Engineer
The next era of IT isn’t about coding harder, it’s about automating smarter. The best IT leaders recognize that their teams’ greatest value is in building intelligent, adaptive systems that scale effortlessly and respond proactively to change.
By shifting focus to elegant automation, developers are empowered to solve bigger problems, create greater impact, and future-proof organizations.
The transition from elegant code to elegant automation represents a significant shift in the software development landscape. It requires a new mindset, a new set of skills and willingness to embrace AI as a collaborative tool rather than adopt AI as a replacement for human expertise.
As we move forward, successful IT teams will be those that effectively harness the power of AI to create elegant, efficient, and scalable automated solutions.
Source:
https://thenewstack.io/agentic-ai-is-quietly-replacing-developers/
