Programming is dead, we’re all code engineers now
Published: 06 Mar 2026
So this week I realised that everything has changed in what I do at work and it has probably changed for you or it will be in the future. It's hit me like a freight train. I consider myself a programmer someone who enjoys coding, gets satisfaction out of building projects, like completing a good crossword, and gets a hit of dopamine from solving the puzzle, fixing a bug, or making something work that didn’t exist before… I worked to fit the pieces together, to logically work it out, and to make end product.
However, programming is dead. This is the realisation I made after following AI development closely for 10 years now. I found that people I’ve been talking to recently in web development had mostly already taken up AI coding / vibe coding / harness engineering (whatever you want to call working with AI agents) they are all in in their day to day use of the technology.
What I found when I was talking to people though, most have this schism—a duality of anticipation for what could be a disaster for various reasons (more below) and a genuine excitement for the abilities they've gained in prototyping and speed of production (although not sure how quantifiable this efficiency gain is myself). My general concern is that the market has changed, making it almost impracticable to let those who want to program actually do it, the economics of it will force their hand and we’ll all be Harness Engineers (https://openai.com/index/harness-engineering/) as OpenAI puts it.
Harness engineering is an odd term, let’s be generous and call it something like: Code Engineer, Code Director, Code Designer, or Product Engineer? Being less generous maybe: AI Warden, Code Prompter, or Code Taste maker..? My point here is our programming job has changed, if we want to stay relevant then we’re forced to adopt, the work is basically a different thing… what you did before is no longer required, so get used to this new... Code Engineering, thing… for now…
It seems the logic also means that we’ll need less coders, probably giving us less need and time to train juniors, and finding different jobs roles now have the abilities required to vibe code some of what would have been programmed (product designers for example), and doing this all at a speed that the job market may not be able to handle. We can't all become bus or train drivers, farmers, middle managers or whatever it is we need to do to make money, even if we wanted too. This is obviously happening in other industries, but as I am in and concerned with programming it's currently hitting me in the face. I never thought when I took up programming that it would be going away, but here we are.
So what does this all mean? Well in the least it’s going to be a rocky old year. In the worst we’ll see massive security issues and data leaks while we’re working out the adoption techniques, there will be a change in job satisfaction (either good or bad in aggregate, I’m presuming negative), and likely mass unemployment, which other industries will also see. There’s also ongoing water / energy / mineral extraction worries with the AI industries’ continued expansion, which massive adoption may help in the long term, but in no way helps us in the short term reaching any climate goals.
Some people I’ve talked to say the tech isn’t quite there yet… but I think if its near enough then the market will force companies to adopt… So the only other option is harder regulation or massive market rejection (which seems unlikely but would be a super interesting historical event if so).
God speed programming, I’ll see you on the weekends next to my crossword puzzle.