The end of computer programming as we know it
In the era of A.I. agents, many Silicon Valley coders are now barely coding.
The New York Times Magazine
March 15, 2026

A.I. is driving one of the strangest changes in the history of computer programming; instead of writing code, software developers are instead spending much of their time talking to chatbots, who are writing and testing the code themselves.

In Clive Thompson’s cover story about the state of computer programming, he explores the impact that the proliferation of A.I. agents has made on the software development industry. Thanks to products like Claude Code and ChatGPT, the most talented and most experienced coders are reporting massive gains in productivity, while entry-level programming jobs are drying up.

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