Why LLMs Can't Really Build Software

Effective software engineering requires building and maintaining clear mental models of both requirements and the code's actual behavior. While LLMs are proficient at writing code, they fail at this critical step of maintaining two distinct mental models and identifying the differences. Current model limitations like context omission, recency bias, and hallucination prevent them from truly understanding the software they are building. For any non-trivial task, LLMs are best viewed as a powerful tool for engineers, but the human must remain in control to ensure correctness and iterate towards a working solution.