Lost and now found?

In the rush to make every step in the design cycle faster and easier, is there a danger that established techniques and skills are being lost? It’s a question faced by engineers wherever they are in the design cycle. Take test, for example. Today, oscilloscopes and logic analysers can be supplied with software that allows the designer to capture, display, analyse, measure and document signal waveforms. A system test engineer may never need to write a line of code again. Many say this is a good thing as it has made testing faster, easier and cheaper. The question is whether maintaining that core software knowledge is of value? As older engineering teams are replaced, are these skills in danger of being lost or are they no longer relevant? As fpga, asic and soc designs increase in size and complexity, the concept of spending more time on verification than chip design is realistic. Like system test processes, many tools have been introduced in recent years to cut verification time and testbenches have become simpler to construct.