Why Write Code in 2026
The author argues that software engineers should continue to write code manually despite the rise of AI agents. They contend that direct interaction with code is essential for understanding system architecture, fragility, and debugging complex issues.
Why it matters
This addresses the evolving role of human developers in an era of increasing AI automation and the potential loss of deep technical expertise.
It’s our job to build the software factory - not just the software. Software engineers maintain the assembly line allowing anyone to prompt for a change and ship immediately.
We set up the infrastructure that makes agents successful. We act proactively through prompts (skills, AGENTS.md, knowledge bases etc). We protect software reactively through automated evaluation (tests, linting, type systems, evals, other AI, etc).
It all keeps the agent on track. Even a stupid model, with fresh context, can work within these constraints and produce a good-enough change. It starts to seem ridiculous to even look at the code. And definitely laughable to ever want to write code.
I disagree. It’s still useful to write code.
Even with Fable-like intelligence humans get value from writing code. Not because agents are worse at coding that humans. But to think directly in the execution environment, not proxied through English.
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