In 1954, IBM said FORTRAN would virtually eliminate coding and debugging. What the numbers say about AI and software work in 2026, and my guess at a developer's Tuesday in 2031.
It’s 7:40 on a Tuesday morning in 2031, and you haven’t written a line of code yet. You probably won’t today, and that’s fine.
The spec says refunds go back to the original card. This customer’s card expired in March. What should happen?
The agent could write refund code all day long. What it can’t do is decide what your company owes a customer whose card has expired, so it stopped and asked, which is exactly what you’d want from a new hire too. Your morning goes like this: you read three pull requests, you go and talk to someone in support, and you write the rule down so clearly that nobody (human or otherwise) has to guess again.
