Confessions of an AI Skeptic

A former Google engineer recounts how, after leaving the company in 2025, he tested Claude Code on tasks ranging from code review and a PHP-to-Jekyll migration to a from-scratch Ruby client for the Hermes agent gateway API, and found it succeeded at novel work at the level of a good mid-level engineer or better. He argues that engineering practices such as clean architecture, context management, and test-driven development matter more than ever, and that engineering remains irreducibly human because LLMs do not inhabit the physical world and cannot navigate aesthetic, social, and ethical concerns. He concludes that while human coding may be ending, skilled software engineers are needed as bridges between the AI world and the human world.