By September 2026 the industry’s own framing had shifted: the value is in workflows, data rights and human review, not flashy demos. That’s a good moment to take stock of what has actually changed in how software gets built. It’s easy to be either dismissive or breathless about AI’s effect on software development, and both postures avoid the more useful question: what, specifically, is actually different about how software gets built today versus three years ago? A few concrete shifts are worth naming, separate from the marketing around them.
