Member-only story
AI codes better than me. And that’s good news.
I haven’t published here in three years. Back then I was writing Python
tutorials — one of them hit 60k views and made the Level Up Coding front
page. Then I stopped, because the questions changed. I came back to write
something different.
I made this statement on a podcast recently. I was the guest, not the host.
It’s a bold claim, and it opens me up to interesting counter-arguments —
mostly some version of “you must be a weak programmer.” We’ll get back to that. Rhetorically, we can leave the question hanging: what does it mean
to be a “strong” programmer? What does it mean to be a “weak” one?
From the trenches
I recently took on a new contract at a serious institution. It’s been six
weeks, and I haven’t manually written a single line of code (is it dangerous
to write this?). Codex did all of it. Of course, it’s not like I tell it
what to do, walk away for coffee, and push whatever it produced. The
process usually goes through several iterations, where we chisel the
solution together, refining from one round to the next. Until I’m satisfied
with the result. Does it take longer? No, it doesn’t. It takes less time.
