Why are so many developers convinced AI won’t replace software engineers?

I keep seeing developers say AI can write code but “can’t do real software engineering.”

But look at the trajectory. A couple of years ago, it could barely write a decent function. The other day I vibe-coded a fairly large app and it built a professional CI/CD pipeline, created an EKS cluster, and deployed the whole thing.

It still makes mistakes, sure. But it’s getting astonishingly better, fast.

I’ve been obsessed with tech for 20 years, and honestly this hurts to admit because I love the field. But AI doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs the knowledge and judgment of a good engineer.

Why are people so confident there’s some permanent wall it won’t cross?