We Aren't At Endgame, Yet
AGI isn’t here yet. What we do have is worth getting excited about
“Anybody who believes we’re at AGI right now probably wouldn’t pass a turing test themselves” ~ Naval Ravikant, 2025.
It’s easy to feel like the world of software is being eclipsed in a flurry of “You will be automated and jobless” - this mantra has me feeling a like Samwise was with the Elves leading Middle Earth.
Although there’s more magic in our industry, it feels somber.
This is, until you dig in to it. We’ve always had abstraction building on abstration. We’re standing on the shoulders of giants. Humans were programmers, calculating everything by hand, and then there were punchcards, and then there was RPG, and then there was C, and there was Python.
Each iteration made it easier to build; each iteration became a force multiplier for individuals, which became a force multiplier for industry. Instead of going to Stack Overflow, you’ve got an answer at your hands, explained in a way that you understand.
Depending on the kind of programmer you are, using something like Aider or Cursor will give you one of two reactions:
“fuck”
or
“damn, I can do so much now”
There are two kinds of programmers - stay with me - the poet and the builder. The rest fall in to the lifer category, which isn’t relevant here.
The lifer turns up to work, does what they’re told and then clocks our. They don’t move up, down or laterally.
The poet focuses on beautiful code: clean, concise and elegant. These are also the people that drag out your standup - but you love them for it. And you need them.
The builder is the kind of person that gets excited about what they can output. They might just code like it’s the first time they’ve coded. They care about output. They drive businesses forward. They’re excited about this stuff.
I’m of the opinion that, it doesn’t matter where you fall on this spectrum of builder-poet. You’ll find it damn frustrating if you lean towards the latter, though. You have another force multiplier in your back pocket and you can create so much more.
Programming is two parts: plumbing and interesting. The first part, the boring part, is more or less out of the way. Enjoy creating: you’ve got your own personal programmer to pair with and work on cool things with.
The thing with having the boring out of the way is: you’re more effective. And if you’re more effective, you’re more effective to the business. And if you’re more effective to the business, the business is way more competitive. And if the business is more competitive, other businesses will want to catch up. And if other businesses want to catch up: they’re going to hire more of you.
We’re not at endgame yet, we’ve unlocked more shoulders to stand on and you should be excited by what you can produce on your own now.
We’ve not gone from nothing to having agents in our IDEs or Terminals. It’s gradual, and that graduality means that you won’t stop existing one day. You either change slowly, or are left behind - as with all technology.
The same will happen to the junior developer role. Stop fretting: they will be fine. As this technology changes our workflow, it will change their workflow too. Not only do they have seniors and principals to lean on, but they have an ever patient, ever available mentor who can explain and work through any problem that they have. That junior developer has their own force multipliers: not only can they build great software, but their growth is accelerated, too.
Endgame is AGI and we know we’re not there yet: There are huge tech companies bragging about lines of code that have been AI generated. How many LLM companies have bragged about how their LLM bootstrapped their next LLM?
We’re at AGI when the LLM can do this, because that’s the point at which it evolves way, way quicker. As it bootstraps itself, it approaches perfection. Once it does that - what happens?
With this, software is merely conjured from cyberspace. Fully formed complex systems are available on demand. Think about this: Instead of opening Google, you open a different kind of window. It morphs into whatever you need it to be. Video tailored just for you? Done. Not feeling well? Speak to a professional who literally has all the answers.
We aren’t at endgame yet. LLMs aren’t writing LLMs. Software developers have a huge force multiplier. Choose your regrets and build something great.