Code as the Common Language Across Hardware Engineering

Prediction

Prediction: code is going to become the common language across hardware* engineering disciplines, not just software engineering.

Why

Why? Because AI excels at taking action via code. Also, graphical interfaces and artefacts have long been a headwind, if not brick wall, for human-to-human collaboration. Human-plus-agent teams collaborating on code will simply move faster than a team of humans with one GUI each.

Compiled artefacts

Graphical representations will still matter, but they’ll be ‘compiled artefacts’ for review at the end of a bunch of iteration.

Same way you don’t review a compiler’s AST; you review the source and run the tests.

Example

To ground this with an example, there’s at least 7 startups working on agent-driven 3D CAD modelling. Once that’s solved—and I believe it’s a matter of time—component design will be requirements in, geometry out. Clicking around a UI for hours on end will be daft. You’ll eyeball the geometry and simulation metrics at the end.

Once geometry is generated deterministically, “requirements in, geometry out” stops sounding like sci-fi and starts sounding like an API.

Don’t worry, you probably won’t have to write the code…

* by hardware I mean aerospace, mechanical, electrical, etc.