The next article initially appeared on Medium and is being republished right here with the creator’s permission.
This publish is a follow-up to a publish from final week on the progress of logging. A colleague pushed again on the concept that we’d quickly be working code we don’t absolutely perceive. He was skeptical: “We’ll nonetheless be those writing the code, proper? You possibly can solely help the code should you wrote it, proper?…proper?”
That’s the belief—nevertheless it’s already slipping.
You Don’t Should Write (or Even Learn) Each Line Anymore
I gave him a easy instance. I wanted drag-and-drop ordering in a kind. I’ve constructed it earlier than, however this time I requested Cursor: “Take this React element, make the rows draggable, persist the order, and generate exams.”
It did. I ran the exams, and every part handed; I then shipped the function with out ever opening the code. Not as a result of I couldn’t however as a result of I didn’t should. That doesn’t imply I all the time ship this manner. More often than not, I nonetheless evaluate, nevertheless it’s turning into extra widespread that I don’t must.
And this isn’t malpractice or vibe coding. The belief comes from two issues: I do know I can debug and repair if one thing goes fallacious, and I’ve sufficient validation to know when the output is strong. If the code works, passes exams, and delivers the function, I don’t must micromanage each line of code. That shift is already right here—and it’s solely accelerating.
Already Snug Ceding Management
Which brings me again to website reliability. Manufacturing techniques are on the identical trajectory. We’re strolling right into a world the place the software program is watching itself, anticipating failures, and quietly fixing them earlier than a human would ever discover. Think about how Airbus advises pilots to maintain the autopilot on throughout turbulence. Computer systems don’t panic or overcorrect; they experience it out easily. That’s what’s coming for operations—techniques that soak up the bumps with out asking you to seize the controls.
This shift doesn’t eradicate people, nevertheless it does change the work. We received’t be observing charts all day, as a result of the important selections received’t be seen in dashboards. Distributors like Elastic, Grafana, and Splunk received’t vanish, however they’ll must reinvent their worth in a world the place the software program is diagnosing and correcting itself earlier than alerts even hearth.
And this occurs quicker than you assume. Not as a result of the expertise matures slowly and predictably, however as a result of the incentives are brutal: The primary firms to eradicate downtime and pager obligation may have an unassailable benefit, and everybody else will scramble to observe. Inside a few years (sorry, I meant weeks), the default assumption shall be that you simply’re constructing for an MCP—the usual machine management airplane that consumes your logs, interprets your indicators, and acts in your behalf. In case you’re not writing for it, you’ll be left behind.
Extra Highly effective Primitives (We Might Not Totally Perceive)
I’ll finish with this. I majored in laptop engineering. I understand how to design an 8-bit microprocessor on FPGAs. . .within the late Nineties. Do you assume I absolutely perceive the Apple M4 chip within the laptop computer I’m writing on? Conceptually, sure—I perceive the ideas. However I don’t know every part it’s doing, instruction by instruction. And that’s advantageous.
We already settle for that form of abstraction on a regular basis. As Edsger W. Dijkstra mentioned: “The aim of abstraction is not to be imprecise, however to create a brand new semantic stage wherein one might be completely exact.” Abstractions give us new constructing blocks—smaller, sharper models of thought—that allow us cease worrying about each transistor and as a substitute design on the stage of processors, working techniques, or languages.
Code era is about to redefine that constructing block once more. It’s not simply one other abstraction layer; it’s a brand new “atom” for a way we take into consideration software program. As soon as that shift takes maintain, we’ll begin leveling up—not as a result of we all know much less however as a result of we’ll be working with extra highly effective primitives.
