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arxiv: 2606.21894 · v2 · pith:3RT6ZICUnew · submitted 2026-06-20 · 💻 cs.SE · cs.AI

Skills for the future software profession: beyond agentic AI!

Sungmin Kang , Baishakhi Ray , Abhik Roychoudhury This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-06-26 12:06 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.SE cs.AI
keywords software engineering skillsagentic AIverification and validationcoding agentsfuture of software professionround-table insightstraining implications
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The pith

Verification and validation skills grow central as coding agents handle more implementation work.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The paper summarizes discussions from two 2026 round-tables to determine the skills future software engineers will need in an era of agentic AI. A central observation is that verification and validation rise in priority once agents manage coding tasks. The authors draw out implications for how training and education of developers should adapt. Sympathetic readers would care because rapid changes in tools are already reshaping daily practice in the field.

Core claim

Round-table participants reported that verification and validation become more important when agents take over implementation, and the paper uses these observations to outline the skills developers need in the agentic era along with consequences for training future engineers.

What carries the argument

The two round-table discussions with researchers and industrial practitioners held in New York and Singapore.

If this is right

  • Education programs should place greater weight on verification and validation techniques.
  • Developers will need skills to direct and check agent-generated code rather than writing all code themselves.
  • Industry practice will shift resources toward testing and assurance activities.
  • Training curricula must evolve to prepare engineers for oversight roles in agent-assisted workflows.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • Companies may need to redesign team structures so that senior engineers focus more on validation gates.
  • Hiring criteria could move away from pure coding proficiency toward skills in prompt engineering and result checking.
  • One testable extension is to survey current practitioners on time spent on verification versus implementation before and after agent adoption.

Load-bearing premise

The views shared in the two round-table events accurately represent the direction software engineering skills will take.

What would settle it

Track whether software engineering job postings and university curricula show measurable increases in emphasis on verification and validation topics within the next three to five years.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2606.21894 by Abhik Roychoudhury, Baishakhi Ray, Sungmin Kang.

Figure 1
Figure 1. Figure 1: Workflow of a future software engineer. • Agent orchestration. Future engineers must be educated to design and reason about agen￾tic workflows that coordinate specialized AI agents. As AI increasingly automates workflow construction, the defining human skill will be evaluating whether these workflows are robust, trustworthy, and aligned with organizational goals and constraints. • Managing cognitive debt. … view at source ↗
read the original abstract

As coding agents are rapidly changing software engineering, a natural question is: what are the core skills needed by future software engineers? To identify where software engineering is headed and thus what skills will be needed, we summarize the results of two round-tables with researchers and industrial practitioners, held in 2026 in New York and Singapore. One key finding is that verification and validation is increasing in importance as agents handle implementation, as highlighted by anecdotes from the events. From our observations, we identify the skills developers need in the agentic era of development, with implications for training and educating future software engineers in coming years.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Referee Report

2 major / 1 minor

Summary. The manuscript summarizes insights from two round-table discussions held in 2026 in New York and Singapore with researchers and industrial practitioners. It identifies skills needed by future software engineers in the agentic AI era, with a central observation that verification and validation is increasing in importance as agents handle implementation tasks.

Significance. If the round-table observations prove representative, the paper could offer timely input for updating software engineering curricula and training programs. However, the anecdotal basis and absence of systematic data collection or controls substantially limit its potential contribution to the literature.

major comments (2)
  1. [Description of the round-table events] The central claims rest on selected anecdotes from the two events without any description of participant recruitment, discussion protocol, recording method, or thematic analysis procedure. This is load-bearing for the key finding on the rising importance of verification and validation.
  2. [Skills identification and implications] No comparison is made to prior surveys or literature on software engineering skill evolution, leaving the identified trends (e.g., V&V emphasis) without external anchoring or falsifiability checks.
minor comments (1)
  1. [Abstract] The abstract should explicitly note that the work is a qualitative summary of discussions rather than an empirical study with generalizable results.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

2 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for the detailed feedback. We address the two major comments below, clarifying the scope of the work as an insight summary from round-table discussions and proposing targeted revisions for transparency and context.

read point-by-point responses

  1. Referee: [Description of the round-table events] The central claims rest on selected anecdotes from the two events without any description of participant recruitment, discussion protocol, recording method, or thematic analysis procedure. This is load-bearing for the key finding on the rising importance of verification and validation.

    Authors: We agree that the manuscript would benefit from additional context on the round-tables. These were informal invited discussions rather than a pre-planned qualitative study, so no formal recruitment protocol, recording, or thematic analysis was applied. We will revise by adding a dedicated subsection describing event organization, participant profiles (researchers and industrial practitioners), and how key themes such as verification and validation emerged from the conversations. This will help readers assess the anecdotal nature of the observations without overstating the methodological rigor. revision: partial

  2. Referee: [Skills identification and implications] No comparison is made to prior surveys or literature on software engineering skill evolution, leaving the identified trends (e.g., V&V emphasis) without external anchoring or falsifiability checks.

    Authors: We will add a related-work section that references prior surveys and studies on software engineering skill evolution in response to AI and automation (e.g., reports on changing developer roles and the growing need for oversight skills). This will explicitly compare our V&V emphasis to existing findings and discuss points of alignment or divergence. revision: yes

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No significant circularity

full rationale

The paper is a direct qualitative summary of two external round-table discussions (New York and Singapore, 2026) with researchers and practitioners. Its central claim—that verification and validation skills are rising in importance—is presented as an anecdote-derived observation from those events, not as a derived result, fitted model, or theorem. No equations, parameters, self-citations, or internal derivations exist; the content is self-contained as a report on independent external inputs.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 0 axioms · 0 invented entities

The paper draws on qualitative expert opinions from round-tables with no formal parameters, axioms, or invented entities.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.1-grok · 5627 in / 859 out tokens · 25271 ms · 2026-06-26T12:06:37.509474+00:00 · methodology

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