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The Many Ends of Programming - Ray Myers
Takeaway
Map AI's impact on programming across six scenarios (from extreme completion to garbage pile) instead of treating it as a binary apocalypse.
Summary
- Ray Myers (chief architect at All Hands AI / OpenHands) proposes six scenarios for software's future: extreme completion, dev apocalypse, abstraction leap, uncharted waters, review economy, infinite pile of garbage.
- Pushes back on Dario Amodei's '12 months until AI writes all code' claim — LLMs break old code, much worse at editing than greenfield.
- Extreme completion (Cursor, Copilot, OpenHands Slack-triggered 48-file PRs) is already happening but keeps engineers on a short leash.
- Dev apocalypse would fulfill computer science's destiny but feasibility is the real objection, not job preservation; speaker uses Haskell's strong type system as a counterbalance to LLM uncertainty.
- Calls for empathy over rhetoric ('resistance is futile' is a Borg quote) when arguing about programming's future.
coding-agentssoftware-engineeringfuture
Original description
AI will reshape Software Engineering – but how remains an open question. Will the developers’ role evolve, or vanish entirely? Are we heading toward an Innovator’s Paradise or an Infinite Pile of Garbage? Visions of the future are so wildly divergent that we struggle to even agree on terms, let alone direction. In this talk, we’ll cut through the noise by exploring six distinct “endgames” for programming in the age of AI. Each offers a different lens on what we build, how we build, and who (or what) is doing the building. By naming and examining these futures, we gain a clearer view of what’s ahead and a chance to choose our destination.