Phil Smeeton's Tech Thinking Blog

I recently attended an agentic developer conference that posed a few philosophical questions: Humans use a lot of software; humans have traditionally been associated with the software development process. Can agents produce better software for humans than humans themselves make with older tools? Is agentic software development dazzled by the promise of software improvement even though the real measure of quality is arguably a human judgement rather than a machine one?   Are human developers in the strongest position with hand crafting tools like classic IDEs or does having agents improve software quality, is the answer subjective and will it depend on the client’s preference?   Time will tell, keep in mind that the final preference is likely to come from users.

At one time of day if you said to a hardware expert you are going to be able to fit billions of transistors onto a single silicon chip they would say it’s not possible at the moment and it might be possible in ten years.   This is the kind of feeling I get when I consider this idea: Massive scale automation, humanoids, robots cleaning the entire environment down to every leaf on every tree.   These robotic automated systems work silently throughout the night and return to their charging hangar before sunrise.   These robots repair the roads, unblock drains and gutters, clean windows, clean vehicles. Customer services might get a call like ‘The overnight automated cleaning didn’t clean my Bentley very well and I’d like to complain’