This is why software devs are not professionals. A professional engineer will not sign off a bridge that he knows is liable to collapse. Software devs will build whatever dangerous immoral garbage their boss tells them to, and then rationalize it to themselves.

A professional has an obligation to a code of professional ethics that supercedes loyalty to their employer. Nothing of the sort exists in software.

A licensed engineer who signs off on a bridge that collapses will not remain an engineer, and may be open to criminal prosecution. Their employer knows that, and therefore doesn’t ask them to make that choice. In the rare cases where they do, the engineer doesn’t end up blacklisted across the industry for saying no.

A software engineer is not so lucky.

You've invented your own, personal definition of the common word "professional", that no one else uses.

You're mixing up the words engineer and professional.

A professional can still be a mere subordinate who just follows orders.

I don't know why it's so poulpular to conflate the word engineer and developer to the point where simonw decided to drop the most important word "software" and started calling AI assisted software development "agentic engineering" which is the most absurd oxymoron you can come up with.

The person prompting for code is delegating the majority of decision making to the AI. This is the antithesis of engineering. Hence the operator cannot be the "engineer", at best the AI can be the "engineer", if it is smart enough.

The word engineering implies a task with trade offs, guarantees and expectations about the finished product. The vast majority of software isn't important enough to even know what the specifications are or what features it should have ahead of time. You throw something at the wall and see what sticks. "Agentic engineering" just accelerates the process of throwing things onto the market.

Then there is the fact that "engineering" has become a euphemism for software and nothing else. Anything physical is excluded from the start.

Finally "agentic engineering" implies that you're engineering the agent, but you're not doing that either. You're just a user who set up a sandbox and is letting the AI loose.