Why I Started This Substack

I’ve spent my entire career building software systems.

More recently, I’ve found myself thinking and writing increasingly about a different question: what happens to software engineering when natural language becomes a viable interface to software?

That question has led me into topics ranging from AI-assisted development and software correctness to deterministic systems, natural language interfaces, and what I believe may become an important architectural boundary between intent determination and execution.

This Substack is a place to think about those ideas in public.

Some posts will be short observations. Some will be essays. Some will be explorations of ideas that eventually find their way into articles, talks, or books. My goal isn’t to predict the future of AI. It’s to understand how software engineering changes when the boundary between people and software begins to move.

To start things off, I’ve published a new article:

The Case for Language-Native Software

The article grew out of an idea I’ve been revisiting for a while. A few years ago, I argued that the future of software might be conversational rather than autonomous. I still think the underlying observation was right, but I’ve come to believe that “conversational” was the wrong framing.

The more interesting shift isn’t that software is becoming conversational. It’s that natural language is becoming an interface.

You can read the full article here:

https://robenglander.com/writing/the-case-for-language-native-software/

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

— Robert Englander