I recently sat down for coffee with one of my oldest friends in the industry.
I recently sat down for coffee with one of my oldest friends in the industry.
“How’s everything going?” I asked, “Crazy times right?”
“We’re up to 1 million lines of code per day now” he replied, expressionless.
“Huh?”
“Lines of code. 1 million. All on auto-pilot.” he repeated.
“Like, your app? This app?” I pulled out my phone and opened the flagship application of the company my friend worked at.
“Yep. A cool million lines. 50,000 just landed since I sat down.”
I scrolled around, clicked some buttons. “It looks kind of the same--”
“Check out the profile page, click your avatar in the top right.” he smirked.
I tapped my avatar in the top corner. Nothing happened.
I tapped again. Nothing.
“Higher” he said, leaning over to see for himself.
“Oh, my bad,” I offered. I continued tapping on my avatar to no avail. “Maybe it just has to load or something?”
“It’s pretty cool we have agents writing the code, reviewing the code, deploying the code, monitoring its effectiveness.” He continued, fully monotone.
I continued tapping my avatar like a rat reaching for a food pellet in an animal behavior trial. “Let me try closing and reopening I guess...”
“It’s been a huge unlock. Customers write in with bug reports--”
“I still can’t click the avatar?” I complained. Tapping more strongly at the top of my phone as it bounced up and down on the coffee table, clobbering like the hooves of a Clydesdale.
“--and those reports kick off a series of agents to come up with the plan. and execute.”
“Is it like a different button to go to my profile or something?”
“I can review it but we’re not even doing that anymore. Oh nice another 200k lines just merged.”
“Do I have to swipe or something?” I continued wildly clawing at my phone like a raccoon digging for trash.
“And the agents are self-healing too. Docs update in real-time.”
“Is there a different corner I’m supposed to click?” I pleaded, desperately.
“Tests auto-improve. Codebase health tracked with every PR.”
“Does this f#&king thing open at all?” I begged.
“The agents are even booking flights for us now.”
Suddenly the tap went through. The avatar button clicked. A new page in the app swiped over.
Completely blank.
“Ah there we go” my friend offered.
I waited for the page to load. Nothing.
“We’re now mainly focused on loops.”
The page remained blank. Nothingness. Like the light behind my friend’s eyes.
“It’s really the wildest thing watching the codebase achieve escape velocity.”
How bright his eyes used to be.
“It’s wild to see how far we’ve come in just a week.”
How we used to pair and learn from one another.
“I can’t even imagine where we’ll be in a month.”
How we used to laugh together.
“It’s never been a more exciting time to be in software.”
I quietly rose from my seat. My phone still showing a blank screen. I grabbed my coat.
“Take care of yourself dude” I said to the man who used to smile.
“It’s never been a more exciting time to be in software.”