Agentic Software Engineering
Agentic Software Engineering by Ralf S. Engelschallby Ralf S. Engelschall
Shares rank 15 of 21 software engineering books by recommenders
Recommended for broad coverage, from brainstorming and web search to querying other LLMs for quorum answers. Critics find it dense and largely AI-written.
Recommended for broad coverage, from brainstorming and web search to querying other LLMs for quorum answers. Critics find it dense and largely AI-written.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 3
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 30%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 3 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Broad coverage of agentic coding
“The comprehensive functionality spans from brainstorming ideas, searching the Web, asking foreign LLMs, finding quorum answers”
Comment from 2 Jul 2026 in “Agentic Software Engineering (ASE): Agentic AI Coding Meets Software Engineering”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Much of text AI-generated
“many parts are clearly AI written”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “Agentic Software Engineering Book” “So much slop. I think something of value could be surfaced much earlier.”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “Agentic Software Engineering Book” “It seems to have so much ai generated everything”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “Agentic Software Engineering Book” - Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “Agentic Software Engineering Book”
Other software engineering books people recommend
The four most recommended other software engineering books, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Mythical Man-Monthby Fred Brooks | 56 | 3 | 95% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Designing Data-Intensive Applicationsby Martin Kleppmann | 37 | 1 | 97% | 12 | — | Approved |
| A Philosophy of Software Designby John Ousterhout | 28 | 1 | 97% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Code Completeby Steve McConnell | 14 | 0 | 100% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Agentic Software Engineeringby Ralf S. EngelschallThis page | 3 | 7 | 30% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
7 of the 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“The comprehensive functionality spans from brainstorming ideas, searching the Web, asking foreign LLMs, finding quorum answers”
“It seems to have so much ai generated everything”
“changes are 80% is written by AI”
“The cover art of this PDF literally spells out what the graphics are supposed to represent.”
“many parts are clearly AI written”
“This is way too dense, you need to distill your thesis and interesting ideas down to a small post”
“So much slop. I think something of value could be surfaced much earlier.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.