Programming as Theory Building: Why Senior Developers Are More Valuable Than Ever

Programming (with AI agents) as theory building

Back in 1985, computer scientist Peter Naur wrote “Programming as Theory Building”. According to Naur — and I agree with him — the core output of software engineers is not the program itself, but the theory of how the program works. In other words, the knowledge inside the engineer’s mind is the primary artifact of engineering work, and the actual software is merely a by-product of that.

I Started Programming When I Was 7. I'm 50 Now, and the Thing I Loved Has Changed | James Randall

I still love developing but the shifts that AI have brought are tectonic and are forcing me to re-evaluate my own relationship to building things

The Real Reason We Still Need Software Developers in the World of AI

The dream of AI churning out perfect production-ready code doesn’t hold up against the reality of modern software development.

How building software is changing at Anthropic

A deepdive on what’s changed in how the leading AI lab makes software. Ever more code review and testing is done by AI, two-pizza teams very much alive, and more. Details from inside of Anthropic

Study finds AI tools made open source software developers 19 percent slower

Coders spent more time prompting and reviewing AI generations than they saved on coding.

Writing Code vs. Shipping Code: Productivity Effects Across Generations of AI Coding Tools

How do the productivity effects of AI evolve across successive generations of tools, and to what extent do task-level gains ultimately translate into final outp

Writing Code vs. Shipping Code: Productivity Effects Across Generations of AI Coding Tools

How do the productivity effects of AI evolve across successive generations of tools, and to what extent do task-level gains ultimately translate into final outp

Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It

In the era of A.I. agents, many Silicon Valley programmers are now barely programming. Instead, what they’re doing is deeply, deeply weird.

Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It

In the era of A.I. agents, many Silicon Valley programmers are now barely programming. Instead, what they’re doing is deeply, deeply weird.

Is AI causing a repeat of Frontend’s Lost Decade? | Mastro Blog

AI is doing to programming what framework-brain did to the frontend before. Deskilling, or just working at a higher level of abstraction?

AI | 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey

84% of respondents are using or planning to use AI tools in their development process, an increase over last year (76%). This year we can see 51% of professional developers use AI tools daily.