September 13, 2026 A common theme in software development AI discourse is that there are "serious" engineers who value the end result and "artisanal" coders who value the experience of coding. This dichotomy does not correctly describe many developers, but one writer reflects on their position within it. The author desires 100% reliability in programs, believing that patience and care are essential ingredients.on that any mistake is due to a typo.

They refuse to use LLMs, arguing these tools isolate developers from low-level details and cannot guarantee correctness by construction. This creates a paradox: by refusing LLMs, the author identifies as an "artisanal coder," yet if the industry labels the opposite of artisanal as "software engineer," they question whether they earn that title. The writer references Hillel Wayne's 2021 crossover project, which interviewed people moving to software engineering from other engineering fields.

The consensus was that software engineering is real engineering, but many who write software are not performing engineering. Wayne's terminology was noted as counter-intuitive to modern usage, calling careful coders "engineers" and prompt-heavy developers "craftsmen." The article concludes that the field lacks a rich vocabulary to distinguish roles, suggesting that not everyone who works with code is an engineer, just as not everyone who works with electricity is an electrical engineer.