# The End of Programming as We Know It – O’Reilly - Host: [oreilly.com](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/hosts/oreilly.com/) - Saved: February 11, 2025 (2025-02-11T13:14:09Z) - Record: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/9fb54a584322/ - JSON: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/9fb54a584322.json ## What Jamie wrote Tom O'Reilly shares his perspective on the future of programming and how he sees AI impacting this. As many realize, programming has evolved so much in the last fifty years in ways that programmers from "back then" would have no idea how modern programmers do there craft. > AI will not replace programmers, but it will transform their jobs. Eventually much of what programmers do today may be as obsolete (for everyone but embedded system programmers) as the old skill of debugging with an oscilloscope. Master programmer and prescient tech observer Steve Yegge observes that it is not junior and mid-level programmers who will be replaced but those who cling to the past rather than embracing the new programming tools and paradigms. Those who acquire or invent the new skills will be in high demand. Junior developers who master the tools of AI will be able to outperform senior programmers who don't. Yegge calls it "[The Death of the Stubborn Developer](https://steve-yegge.medium.com/the-death-of-the-stubborn-developer-b5e8f78d326b)." He shares an interesting real world example, possibly even highlighting what could be a future specialization. > "That last mile of taking a cool platform and a bunch of your business processes and manifesting an agent is actually pretty hard to do," Bret explained. "There's a new role emerging now that we call an [agent engineer](https://sierra.ai/blog/meet-the-ai-agent-engineer), a software developer who looks a little bit like a frontend web developer. That's an archetype that's the most common in software. If you're a React developer, you can learn to make AI agents. What a wonderful way to reskill and make your skills relevant." At the end of the day, programming is about solving problems and we are getting entirely new tools to build those solutions with. > "Workflow still matters," Sankar argued, and the job of the programmer will be to understand what can be done by traditional software, what can be done by AI, what still needs to be done by people, and how you string things together to actually accomplish the workflow. Technology in general requires constant reinvention. I've shared many times that to have a career in technology is to have a career in learning. You always have to be learning today the things that will drive your craft forward in the future. AI is causing an inflection point in that learning that is similar to other major changes. It wasn't that long ago that Cloud Engineering wasn't a thing for example. The important thing for technologist? Use this stuff. Don't hold back. Engage. Learn. Understand it. ## Facts - Kind: [Page](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/kinds/page/) ## Appears in - [WT309: Weekly Thing 309 / Programming, Silence, Drones](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/309/), Featured ## Same host - [Technology Trends for 2024 – O’Reilly](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/d6ca2a74f413/) (oreilly.com, February 1, 2024) - [What We Learned from a Year of Building with LLMs (Part I) – O’Reilly](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/4c03d6d183f7/) (oreilly.com, May 30, 2024) - [How to Fix “AI’s Original Sin” – O’Reilly](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/2654a181afd1/) (oreilly.com, July 20, 2024) - [MCP in Practice – O’Reilly](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/751708de9e48/) (oreilly.com, September 25, 2025) - [The Agentic Commerce Revolution – O’Reilly](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/6c38f5689c6a/) (oreilly.com, February 12, 2026) ## Saved the same week - [Apple Ordered by UK to Create Global iCloud Encryption Backdoor - MacRumors](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/59acfaac3215/) (macrumors.com, February 11, 2025) - [Internet Archive played crucial role in tracking shady CDC data removals - Ars Technica](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/bc7da75441e7/) (arstechnica.com, February 11, 2025) - [Drones are now launching drones to attack other drones in Ukraine - Ars Technica](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/4a41bca66062/) (arstechnica.com, February 11, 2025) - [EFF to Ninth Circuit: Young People Have a First Amendment Right to Use Social Media (and All of Its Features) | Electronic Frontier Foundation](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/d18fef262452/) (eff.org, February 11, 2025) - [Agile as Trauma — Dorian Taylor](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/ac701d878ee1/) (doriantaylor.com, February 11, 2025) ## Elsewhere - Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.oreilly.com/radar/the-end-of-programming-as-we-know-it/