I roll my eyes at this when thinking about the poor JavaScript developer that cannot write code without things like jquery or React.

If code were so easy there wouldn’t be so much bloat and slow garbage in the world.

Claude writes 90% of my code but the bottlenecks always were and still are:

* getting clear requirements from product

* getting the damn code reviewed so I can merge it

Neither of these are fixed. Frankly, overuse of AI has made both of these worse. Claude brained product owners going hog wild with Claude Design are a nightmare to deal with, and the volume of absolute trash quality code being submitted for review is soul crushing.

No, using AI to automate code reviews is not acceptable. Code Review isn’t about a systematic checklist (though they can help) it’s about making sure people understand the actual changes being made to the system because it’s people who are accountable for what happens in production. LLMs can be part of the process of reviewing code but they suffer from the same issues as any other chatbot based tools (hallucinations, context confusion or not enough context, getting bogged down in impossible code paths or other minutia, etc…) so you have to review that review carefully too. Human judgment is still king.

These days my job is primarily reviewing offshore slop and making sure it’s in a good enough state to merge. I’m doing merge and release management way more than actually coding (and it sucks btw because I actually enjoy coding with or without agents). If the quality of the code turned in for me to review and merge is any indication, engineers/system architects are going to have their hands full.

Side note: I so forgot about the "Don't make me think" book! Thanks for reminding this exists. I submit this should be part of "Software Development 101", right there alongside SICP.

Programmers are the only[1] hired professionals that can compete directly or go off the market entirely in their own venture with either:

A) nearly zero overhead costs

B) can afford the overhead costs

The compensation is to discourage programmers from doing so, make life comfortable enough for them to not want to bother with getting around IP assignments

The major market of California barring and invalidating non compete clauses in case law, and strengthened by the legislature, also codifies this premium

Make the software alchemist’s lives comfortable

[1] feel free to find counterpoints, and what is their compensation like?

2026 - "Coding was always hard, please don't lay me off."