Google exec says software engineering is changing rapidly, but now is the best era to be a developer.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Keith Ballinger, Google’s vice president and general manager for Developer & Experiences who is based in Seattle. His identity and employment have been verified by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I’ve been a software engineer most of my life.

I joined Microsoft in the late ’90s, working on C# and .NET in those first few years, and then did a bunch of startups that were focused on developers. Later on, I came back to Microsoft through a startup that they acquired, Xamarin. My boss and I ran the deal that acquired GitHub, and then I was the senior vice president of engineering at GitHub.

I came to Google about three and a half years ago. I’m the vice president and general manager for Developer & Experiences so I focus on AI assistance for developers across the software development life cycle.

If you thought your job as a software engineer was about writing code in a…