Modern large language models (LLMs) are a new kind of power tool that disrupts software engineering. Our field has shifted several times before, but this one is a doozy. A conversation with a friend led to him asking “What would you encourage new computer science graduates or current CS students to focus on to make themselves successful?” It’s a natural question when it feels like a sea change is transforming the field.

In my post about AI agents as power tools I wrote that agents are good at picking up existing patterns. Here’s a concrete example of what that looks like—both the strengths and the limits.

The setup

I have a project using SQLite with a bespoke database versioning and migration system. Nothing fancy, just a version number stored in the database and a set of migration functions that upgrade from one version to the next. The kind of thing you write when you need migrations but don’t need a framework.