Simon Willison contrasts coding agents’ benefits with the loss of programming puzzles

Simon Willison highlighted Jeremy Scheff’s account of what programmers lose when coding agents take over problems they enjoyed solving, while arguing that LLMs remain a continuing gift for programmers focused on building working systems. Scheff described a career that rewarded solving coding puzzles and gave programmers control over strategy, timelines, and judgments about feasibility. Willison’s distinction centers on what programmers value in the work: he sees benefits for those whose goal is a working system, while recognizing a real loss for those who enjoyed solving the underlying problems themselves.

Generated by AI from reports · Updated 54 minutes ago

There is not enough continuous observation data to plot a trend yet.