My obituary for programming
- ID
- 37210
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 20 Oct 2026, 7:58 AM
- Fetched
- 20 Oct 2026, 8:59 AM
- Provider
- Simon Willison
- Category
- developer-ai
- Original URL
- https://simonwillison.net/2026/Oct/19/my-obituary-for-programming/
- Source URL
- https://simonwillison.net/atom/everything/
Summary
- Score
- 6.0
- Created
- 20 Oct 2026, 8:59 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_coders
What happened
Simon Willison's 19 October 2026 link post quotes Jeremy Scheff's essay "My obituary for programming," which argues that coding agents have removed what made the job pleasurable for a certain kind of programmer: being paid to solve "tricky little logic puzzles" that non-programmers couldn't do, while setting the strategy, timeline, and definition of what was possible. Willison's own framing splits the audience in two — programmers who "thrive on building working systems" get an endless gift from LLMs, while those whose enjoyment came from directly solving the problems themselves face a real loss.
Why it matters
It gives you a concrete test to apply to your own week: list the tasks you'd hand to a coding agent tomorrow without caring, and the ones where the solving itself is the payoff. The essay claims the second category is being quietly deleted from professional programming, so if that category is what keeps you in the job, delegating it away is a decision you should make deliberately rather than by default. Note the piece is pure reflection — it contains no data, no tooling change, and nothing Malaysia-specific.
Discussion angle
Go around the room: name one task you refuse to delegate to an agent because the solving is the point — then check whether your current workflow already delegated it without you deciding.