# Agentic Software Engineering by Ralf S. Engelschall

3 Hacker News commenters recommended Agentic Software Engineering by Ralf S. Engelschall and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended for broad coverage, from brainstorming and web search to querying other LLMs for quorum answers. Critics find it dense and largely AI-written.

## Why people recommend it

- Broad coverage of agentic coding (1 comments): "The comprehensive functionality spans from brainstorming ideas, searching the Web, asking foreign LLMs, finding quorum answers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48761119))

## What people warn about

- Much of text AI-generated (4 comments): "many parts are clearly AI written" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47117911)) "So much slop. I think something of value could be surfaced much earlier." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47117819)) "It seems to have so much ai generated everything" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47118925))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mythical-man-month.md): 56 recommend
- [Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann](https://hackerapproved.com/p/designing-data-intensive-applications.md): 37 recommend
- [A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout](https://hackerapproved.com/p/a-philosophy-of-software-design.md): 28 recommend
- [Code Complete by Steve McConnell](https://hackerapproved.com/p/code-complete.md): 14 recommend
- [The Architecture of Open Source Applications by Amy Brown and Greg Wilson](https://hackerapproved.com/p/architecture-of-open-source-applications.md): 13 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/3642544320?tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Bookshop.org](https://bookshop.org/a/130825/9783642544323) (affiliate link)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Agentic Software Engineering by Ralf S. Engelschall", https://hackerapproved.com/p/agentic-software-engineering/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).