Is it weird that AI coding assistance is not giving me identity fracture?
A lot of software developers are feeling disoriented and threatened these days. Programming by hand is clearly going the way of the buggy whip and the hand-cranked auger. Which is how we’re finding out that a lot of people have their identities bound up in being good at hand-coding and how it feels to do that.
That’s not me. It’s not me at all. Rather to my surprise, I don’t miss coding by hand, not any more than I missed writing assembler when compilers ate the world and made that unnecessary. (That was in a couple years back around 1983, for you youngsters.)
Maybe the fact that I’m not feeling any of this disorientation disqualifies me from having anything to say to people who are. On the other hand … if you can learn to emulate my mental stance and be completely unbothered, maybe that would be a good thing?
So. If you’re a programmer, and you’re feeling disoriented, try this on for size:
I like being a wizard. I like being able to speak spells, to weave complex patterns of logic that make things happen in the world. Writing code is a way to manifest my will.
Yes, I’ve piled up a lot of arcane knowledge over the 50 years I’ve been doing this. But languages of invocation, they come and they go. Been a long time since I’ve had any use for being able to program in 8086 assembler, and that’s okay. I have better spells now, and these days some rather powerful familiars.
What I’m inviting you to do is think of yourself as a wizard. Not as a person who writes code, but as a person who is good at assuming the kind of mental states required to bend reality with the application of spells.
And if that’s who you are, does it matter if the spells are painstakingly scribed in runes of power, versus being spoken to an obedient machine spirit?
It’s all one; it’s all the manifestation of will. Arcane languages come and go, machine spirits appear and then diminish to be replaced by more powerful ones, but you? You are the magic-wielder. Without you, none of it happens.
Same as it ever was. Same is it ever was. And so mote it be.
ESR, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, 2026-02-17.
Update, 21 May: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
[…] OKAY… QotD: Software developers as wizards. […]
Pingback by Instapundit » Blog Archive » OKAY… QotD: Software developers as wizards. — May 21, 2026 @ 02:31
I, too am enjoying the “amplification” of AI coding…at 77.
Thinking how much could have been done had this been available 50 years ago.
Following you on X.
Comment by Bob Wirka — May 21, 2026 @ 06:53
I suspect it’s mostly the people who went to “Java Boot Camp” or something that are feeling this angst. They haven’t really learned how to think as a developer, i.e. how to solve problems.
You still need to figure out what went wrong, and how to fix it. So far at least.
Comment by M — May 21, 2026 @ 07:42
This article is pretty spot on. Wizardry is a nice analogy, but it is really the normal evolution of industrialization. Back in the dark ages when I was a software development manager, I read a commentary that struck a chord -to wit, software is produced in the same way way shoes were made in the Middle Ages: each cobbler at his bench producing a single pair of shoes at a time.
My eldest works in manufacturing, computer aided machining to be exact. The machines are complex and a bit of thought goes into setting up one of them to make a specific part to the correct tolerances. Once a few parts have been run and tested, the machine will start knocking them out wholesale. Being a mechanical process you do have to do periodic QC checks to make sure the tolerances are holding steady.
Scroll time back 200 years and parts were made by hand by skilled craftsmen using hand tools, then some mechanical aids like powered drills and lathes etc. Now by complex machines run by skilled, trained operators.
Software has finally caught up with this evolution. AI provides the CAM engines. The lone programmer crouched over her keyboard laboriously hammering out lines of code to meet the requirements of a spec is now replaced by a skilled operator who translates the spec into instructions for the AI engine and checks the results for compliance with the spec. In the end, tens of thousands of lines of code can be generated in a matter of microseconds. Test data sets may also be generated in a similar process by skilled QC engineers.
Back in the day as a manager I used a fairly simple metric that appeared to be language independent (I had worked with APL, C, BASIC,SQL scripts,IBM AND VAX command languages – yes I’m that old.) I found that if I assumed each programmer would write 5 lines of debugged code per man-hour, my time lines for delivery were pretty darn close. Of course I had to allow for integration of all the shoes that came off of each cobbler’s workbench. Allowing AI engines to replace much of these processes speeds this up by orders of magnitude.
Of course, like any human artifact, AI embodies the assumptions and biases of its human makers, so there is an imperative need for skilled human oversight – to employ your metaphor, to avoid the “sorcerer’s apprentice” phenomenon.
Comment by Mark Weinburg — May 21, 2026 @ 09:20
Speaking as a retired coder of fifty years experience, I totally agree with ESR. In the big picture, you’re trying to achieve a goal. Coding is the means to get to that goal, not the goal itself. Architecting the solution is the big kick, the coding is just a means to that end. Elegant code is very enjoyable, but it’s like painting a picture. The final picture and it’s impact on people who look at it is the goal. That the brush strokes in certain places were inspired is just a detail, mostly enjoyed by the artist.
AI can certainly steer you wrong and you need to monitor what it produces, but the same is true of your junior developers. Treat it right and give good and detailed prompts and it can produce a magical amount of code in a short time.
Comment by Rob — May 21, 2026 @ 10:50