6 ms·

Man, as a former extreme skeptic, I watched a video from Eric Schmidt in early 2025 where he said that by the end of the year nobody would be coding, and that o

Man, as a former extreme skeptic, I watched a video from Eric Schmidt in early 2025 where he said that by the end of the year nobody would be coding, and that one was dead frickin on.

weakfish 15d ago
I mean, I code?
torben-friis 15d ago
I guess I don't exist...
- marcosdumay 15d ago
  I guess the GP is joking. But on the current climate, it's really hard to be sure.
meowface 15d ago
Dario Amodei and Eric Schmidt seem fairly well-calibrated, although a bit early. Elon Musk is constantly way, way overoptimistic (perhaps to the point of willful fraud). Zitron is hopelessly and ridiculously incompetent (and there are allegations he is willfully lying, too, but who knows).
- marcosdumay 15d ago
  The AGI that appeared mid 2023 and killed single every person in 8 months was neat!
  - meowface 15d ago
    Did Dario Amodei say that?
  - specialist 15d ago
    Live long enough and all these apocalypses start to smell the same.
zombiwoof 15d ago
[dead]
solid_fuel 15d ago
You may be living in a bubble. There are tons of developers still coding by hand, and many industries that don't trust machine generated code in general.
- HDBaseT 15d ago
  It does raise the question, what percentage of programmers are predominantly writing code by hand? Is it higher than 50%?
- tty456 15d ago
  Do they also not trust their code review processes?
  - applfanboysbgon 15d ago
    Have you considered that they do trust their code review processes, and that they don't trust the generated code because it doesn't pass their process?
    - Supermancho 15d ago
      > they don't trust the generated code because it doesn't pass their process That's not a credible scenario. Developers can either make changes by hand, or by asking an LLM, which is the common process when there is a downstream failure. Humans dont metaphorically throw their hands up and say "well the tool doesn't meet our expectations at every scale so we're not going to use it". Granted, most developers scale back how much they rely on it based on experience (good and bad).
      - skydhash 15d ago
        That's very much a credible scenario. I think I use code from SO in a single digit of occasions. But I use it a lot more for giving me insight like a keyword for doing a proper web search. Or the name of a flag for a cli command, or the general shape of an algorithm or what to check in a troubleshooting session. I won't generalize, but it's very rare for me to need code as most of my diffs are either boilerplate (generated with a tool or copied from docs or samples) or core logic that is mostly the translation of some design that I've already spent hours or days on. My core issue has always been incomplete specs from Product or incomplete docs for some tool/sdk/library (alleviated by having access to the source code). Generated code is just not that useful, especially when designing the core architecture of a new project. And later it's not that useful either as the specs (why and how) is more valuable than any code (what).
tensor 15d ago
As far as I'm aware, aside from toy prototypes, all software is still built by humans coding, albeit with better auto-complete.
- aka-rider 15d ago
  It is all very unevenly distributed. SaaS and general web is basically on auto mode. A lot of infra is vibe coded nowadays too. Even prototypes are contributing to the speed of software development. Many people vibe code throwaway dashboards around the main platform which gives a lot of insights.
  - 3ddds 15d ago
    [dead]
- nl 15d ago
  This seems to be more a problem of your awareness than a lack of projects. Apart from every software engineer I know building almost completely with AI now there have been numerous projects posted on HN that are AI coded. There's also Claude desktop which is famously all AI built and very widely used.
  - 3ddds 15d ago
    [dead]
  - paodealho 15d ago
    Have you ever considered: - that you don't know most people in the world - that some of the people you know are using these tools because they were forced ?
    - nl 15d ago
      > that you don't know most people in the world Of course. To be clear, the claim was "all software is still built by humans coding" I know this all software claim is false because I've seen it. Proof by example. > that some of the people you know are using these tools because they were forced Irrelevant to that claim.
bandrami 15d ago
There are whole industries that still don't let LLM-generated code touch production
rapind 15d ago
Everyone who started using claude clode when it came out in early 2025, knew it was coming (not quite yet). That felt more like reporting than prophesying.
- sroerick 14d ago
  That may be true - but I hadn't used Claude Code and I was still in the "its impossible to vibecode successfully" mindset
goatlover 15d ago
On a second reading I'm going to take this as sarcasm.
theptip 14d ago
Two problems. One, people mean different things by “coding”. Two, it’s diffused slower than folks predicted. But the core prediction was not crazy for “coding as typing code”, which at most big tech companies is at roughly 100% automation now. If by “coding” you mean the full SDLC then we are not automated yet. I think failing to account for the diffusion delay was an actual prediction error, since that is a property of every technology in history.

Man, as a former extreme skeptic, I watched a video from Eric Schmidt in early 2025 where he said that by the end of the year nobody would be coding, and that one was dead frickin on.

weakfish 15d ago

I mean, I code?

torben-friis 15d ago

I guess I don't exist...

marcosdumay 15d ago
I guess the GP is joking. But on the current climate, it's really hard to be sure.

meowface 15d ago

Dario Amodei and Eric Schmidt seem fairly well-calibrated, although a bit early. Elon Musk is constantly way, way overoptimistic (perhaps to the point of willful fraud). Zitron is hopelessly and ridiculously incompetent (and there are allegations he is willfully lying, too, but who knows).

marcosdumay 15d ago
The AGI that appeared mid 2023 and killed single every person in 8 months was neat!
- meowface 15d ago
  Did Dario Amodei say that?
- specialist 15d ago
  Live long enough and all these apocalypses start to smell the same.

zombiwoof 15d ago

[dead]

solid_fuel 15d ago

You may be living in a bubble. There are tons of developers still coding by hand, and many industries that don't trust machine generated code in general.

HDBaseT 15d ago
It does raise the question, what percentage of programmers are predominantly writing code by hand? Is it higher than 50%?
tty456 15d ago
Do they also not trust their code review processes?
- applfanboysbgon 15d ago
  Have you considered that they do trust their code review processes, and that they don't trust the generated code because it doesn't pass their process?
  - Supermancho 15d ago
    > they don't trust the generated code because it doesn't pass their process That's not a credible scenario. Developers can either make changes by hand, or by asking an LLM, which is the common process when there is a downstream failure. Humans dont metaphorically throw their hands up and say "well the tool doesn't meet our expectations at every scale so we're not going to use it". Granted, most developers scale back how much they rely on it based on experience (good and bad).
    - skydhash 15d ago
      That's very much a credible scenario. I think I use code from SO in a single digit of occasions. But I use it a lot more for giving me insight like a keyword for doing a proper web search. Or the name of a flag for a cli command, or the general shape of an algorithm or what to check in a troubleshooting session. I won't generalize, but it's very rare for me to need code as most of my diffs are either boilerplate (generated with a tool or copied from docs or samples) or core logic that is mostly the translation of some design that I've already spent hours or days on. My core issue has always been incomplete specs from Product or incomplete docs for some tool/sdk/library (alleviated by having access to the source code). Generated code is just not that useful, especially when designing the core architecture of a new project. And later it's not that useful either as the specs (why and how) is more valuable than any code (what).

tensor 15d ago

As far as I'm aware, aside from toy prototypes, all software is still built by humans coding, albeit with better auto-complete.

aka-rider 15d ago
It is all very unevenly distributed. SaaS and general web is basically on auto mode. A lot of infra is vibe coded nowadays too. Even prototypes are contributing to the speed of software development. Many people vibe code throwaway dashboards around the main platform which gives a lot of insights.
- 3ddds 15d ago
  [dead]
nl 15d ago
This seems to be more a problem of your awareness than a lack of projects. Apart from every software engineer I know building almost completely with AI now there have been numerous projects posted on HN that are AI coded. There's also Claude desktop which is famously all AI built and very widely used.
- 3ddds 15d ago
  [dead]
- paodealho 15d ago
  Have you ever considered: - that you don't know most people in the world - that some of the people you know are using these tools because they were forced ?
  - nl 15d ago
    > that you don't know most people in the world Of course. To be clear, the claim was "all software is still built by humans coding" I know this all software claim is false because I've seen it. Proof by example. > that some of the people you know are using these tools because they were forced Irrelevant to that claim.

bandrami 15d ago

There are whole industries that still don't let LLM-generated code touch production

rapind 15d ago

Everyone who started using claude clode when it came out in early 2025, knew it was coming (not quite yet). That felt more like reporting than prophesying.

sroerick 14d ago
That may be true - but I hadn't used Claude Code and I was still in the "its impossible to vibecode successfully" mindset

goatlover 15d ago

On a second reading I'm going to take this as sarcasm.

theptip 14d ago

Two problems. One, people mean different things by “coding”. Two, it’s diffused slower than folks predicted. But the core prediction was not crazy for “coding as typing code”, which at most big tech companies is at roughly 100% automation now. If by “coding” you mean the full SDLC then we are not automated yet. I think failing to account for the diffusion delay was an actual prediction error, since that is a property of every technology in history.