Any Fool with a Scalpel

Nana recently underwent surgery for a large abdominal hernia. Afterward, she shared a picture of the operating room. Hanging from the ceiling was a device best described as remarkable — several articulating arms, each tipped with a precision instrument, positioned over the operating table. There was no large incision. No surgeon reaching directly into her body. Instead, several small punctures, through which each instrument was inserted and guided as needed. The operation was performed entirely through the machine.

I looked at that picture and thought: what an extraordinary tool. And then, almost immediately: imagine handing it to a first-year resident who has never held a scalpel, never lost a patient, and never developed the judgment that only comes from years of training under surgeons who demanded more than competence.

Surgery in the early 1900s was educated guesswork performed with blunt instruments, unreliable anesthesia, and almost no understanding of infection. Patients who survived the procedure frequently did not survive the recovery.

Every advancement that followed — antiseptics, precision instruments, imaging, anesthesia, and eventually robotic-assisted surgery — did not lower the skill requirement. It raised the consequences of lacking it.

The scalpel did not make surgeons interchangeable. It made the gap between a trained surgeon and an untrained hand more dangerous. The tool never replaced judgment. It amplified it — in both directions.

Agentic AI is the articulating arm hanging from the ceiling of software engineering. It is an extraordinary advancement.

In the wrong hands, it produces results that are clean, confident, and completely wrong — at a speed and scale previously impossible.

To business and technical leaders: the assumption that agentic AI produces superior results, or results that are "good enough," regardless of who is directing it, is the assumption that the robotic surgical system operates itself.

It does not.

Someone trained, experienced, and principled is still standing at the controls. The tool amplifies what that person brings. Nothing more.

If what they bring is shallow, the tool amplifies that too — faster, and at greater cost than before.

The businesses most at risk are not the ones that fail to adopt agentic AI. They are the ones that adopt it without understanding what they are actually putting in charge of their software.

To development engineers: the question is not whether agentic AI will change your career. It will.

The question is what you bring to it.

The engineers who will thrive are not the ones who learned to prompt. They are the ones who understand sound principles and best practices deeply enough to recognize when the tool is right, when it is wrong, and when it is confidently producing something that will cost the business dearly six months from now.

If you cannot reliably make that distinction, the tool is not making you more effective. It is making you more dangerous.

The tool will not tell you. It does not know. It cannot know.

Only you can know — and only if you have done the work to develop the judgment that makes that knowledge possible.

Nana's surgeon did not walk into that operating room because a remarkable machine was hanging from the ceiling.

The machine was there because a remarkable surgeon was walking into the room.

The advancement of the tool has never, in any industry, reduced the value of the skilled practitioner.

It has always increased it. And made the cost of the unskilled harder to hide.

Reconciling yourself to the value of proven experience — engineers who have built sound principles and best practices through years of deliberate practice — is what keeps businesses from accelerating headlong into disaster, and what keeps engineers relevant in the age of the very tools threatening to replace them.

The businesses that thrive will be the ones who identify and retain true Software Crafters. The engineers who thrive will be the ones who have committed to becoming one.

Be reconciled!