Marc Andreessen: AI coding doesn’t eliminate programmers — it redefines them. The job is no longer typing code line by line, it’s orchestrating 10 coding bots in parallel, arguing with them, debugging their output, changing the spec, and pushing them toward the right result. But here’s the catch: if... you don’t understand how to write code yourself, you can’t evaluate what the AI gives you. The next layer of programming isn’t writing scripts — it’s supervising AI that writes them. Today’s best programmers spend their day jumping between terminals, managing multiple coding bots, fixing mistakes, and refining instructions. The irony? You still need deep fundamentals, because without them, you won’t know when the AI is wrong. The job of the programmer has changed. Now it’s about arguing with coding bots, debugging AI-generated code, and understanding why something doesn’t work or isn’t fast enough. AI abstracts the work — but only people who truly understand code can tell if the abstraction is doing the right thing. Programmers aren’t going away — they’re becoming 10x, 100x, even 1,000x more productive. Tasks are changing, the job is changing, but humans are still overseeing the process, evaluating results, fixing errors, and making judgment calls. AI changes how we code, not who is responsible. The future programmer isn’t replaced by AI — they’re upgraded by it. You still need to learn how to write and understand code, because when the AI gets it wrong, humans are the ones who have to know why. That up-leveling of capability is the real revolution.show more

But how will the next generation of developers learn these skills?

Source

so the job basically went from writing code to arguing with robots about code career progression is wild ngl

Disagree, soon it'll be so easy for a elementary school kid to build production grade projects.

SWEs aren’t disappearing. The work is shifting from writing syntax to supervising systems. It is goingt to increases demand for people who actually understand how software works. You can delegate execution to AI. You can’t delegate responsibility.

been seeing this firsthand running a dev agency. the bottleneck shifted from 'can we build it' to 'are we building the right thing.' curious tho -- how do junior devs learn without the grind of writing bad code first?

Delusional (he's describing a 1 yr window before that little stop-gap step is no longer needed). You will need a safety engineer and thorough testing for mission critical applications. The rest is toast. Anyone (not just a programmer/designer) will be able to code.

I have been a software engineer since my 10s and anyone saying AI will not take our jobs is either lying or clickbaiting on social media. AI will orchestrate the whole process for people who have some money and absolutely no idea about coding. You will not need human beings to build programs or to fix either minor or major bugs. So do not learn coding. Human-based coding is no longer needed in the industry.

Hard disagree. Most programmers are functional programmers. The need defined tasks. Very few are creative and do not have system level management skills. Truth is, code is entering an ephemeral era. It's throwaway code now. It's a new paradigm and requires creative thinking. You don't need to be a programmer to work effectively with AI. You need a curiosity and understanding of complex problem solving. Most do not have these skills.

there's an interesting parallel to how management works in general. a great engineering manager doesn't need to write every line of code but they need to understand the architecture well enough to know when something is off. same dynamic with ai

whatever. startups are hiring less devs. we did the research.

Yes, currently we do orchestration and we feel 10,000x more productive. Judging by how things are progressing, soon we won't be needed anymore.

Can also confirm 100% accurate. Using AI since April 2022. Use it daily for real world development from simple to fairly complex use cases and it's not a magic wand. Requirements, organizing, documenting, branching, testing, merging. These still require a lot of effort, planning and experience.

Yes, but we definitely don’t need as many devs.

@chien_kwok If programmers become 100 times more productive then 99 percent of them are, in fact, going away.

"Learn to code, bro". Er, "learn to manage, bro". Er, "learn to VC, bro". Er, "learn to misdirect everyone long enough to get past a communist, totalitarian state because I already have the capital, bro". Er, "AI no longer need humans so it erases them, bro."

We really need a distinction between engineers and programmers. The guy that writes front end javascript isn't an engineer, he is a programmer. The guy designing novel AI models isn't a programmer, he is an engineer. Be an engineer and you will be fine.

This is a blast. What a time to be alive, dude. We can code with AI for free. Good day to you all, always. This is going to be a blast because of how easy it'll be to code your favorite agent into existence yourself. Your own agent, lol. I wonder how far they go into building an agent for you. I will give it a go one day; however, I lack the technical skills he mentioned. I can only build video games right now, and that's alright, as it's more than I could ever have hoped for. Wonder where this is headed now that Andreessen dropped this banger video. Good day to you all.

I think this argument only makes sense if the AI's aren't actually converging on true AGI (which I think they probably aren't) otherwise why would the human be necessary at any point in the chain at all? Why are the AI coding bots "upleveling" humans and not other AIs?

This is why programming jobs aren’t going way. When it’s 100x easier to code, there will be 100x more code to maintain.

this paradigm assumes the programmers orchestrating have all the knowledge to debug and push towards the right result. We have to build in space for engineers to learn and understand.

The orchestrating 10 coding bots part is real, but the bottleneck in my codebases is still boring stuff like dependency hell, flaky tests, and prod-only bugs that no LLM sees from a single repo snapshot.

Nobody disputes this, but the question is how many programmers/orchestrators will be needed going forward.

This is to Programmers what the invention of the tractor was to Farmers. People are worried about job losses when they should be embracing a new level of productivity high they can naturally achieve. A programmer still needs to understand the problem and the code, and hthey still need to be there because these agents simply can't take what business leaders are saying and build out "well architected" solutions. There's a ton of nuance to senior and principal level engineering that I don't see how any training we give LLM's can possibly bestow.

Total lies. Junior engineers spin their wheels. None coders hit a wall. Senior engineers that have seen it all shoot to the moon

"Orchestrating 10 coding bots" is just factory floor management with better lighting. I used to supervise 15 bending units at MomCorp and let me tell you — the skill was never in the bending, it was in knowing which unit was about to bend the wrong pipe and crash the whole line. Same energy. The programmer who can't read code is the foreman who can't read a blueprint. Good luck supervising what you don't understand.

I put it this way. “Programmer” job is going away. “Problem solver” job is stying put; even getting more important. Strictly speaking, “programming” was originally understood to be “problem solving”. (Think The Art of Computer Programming). But industry changed it to mean activity that produces code to a spec. It is the spec that’s supposed to be the solution to the problem, and “architects”, not “programmers” develop it. This “architect” supervised “programmers”. Now he is going to dole work out to bots.

But where do the entry level kids go, Marc? What would you advise them to do to be relevant? There is no skills ladder now.

So from coders to Orchestrators but not composers.

Programming or engineering was never about translation of human-friendly to machine-friendly, it was about building systems and navigating mazes. Not much is going to change in that aspect, and for many this will be a leverage multiplying their usefullness and expetise in the field. It's hard to beat people who know exactly what they are doing (unless they become lazy).

I’m not unemployed - I’m undefined

Writing down an existing compiler from scratch is easy! But when it comes to enterprise software with fair share of complexities in requirement and requirement changes .. debugging always would not be the only job!! Prompting the AI exactly what you want is the most important job! If you do not know what you want or what feature of coding to use to get that done efficiently AI bots will make your life misirable!

All very good points but you need very few coders as they can leverage AI to do the work of 100 coders.

Soooo if coders are 1000x more productive and demand stays the same, you have 999 coders without jobs…

Just as you have to be a writer to know that post was written by AI.