@mattpocockuk ↔ @bcherny conversation
Matt Pocock@mattpocockuk
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Aug 24, 2026
~2 min read
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Matt Pocock@mattpocockuk
I've been thinking about this quote for a solid 24 hours
It's a like a raspberry ripple of bullshit
A vanilla ice cream of VC funding, stirred with a little pinch of turd
It's a like a raspberry ripple of bullshit
A vanilla ice cream of VC funding, stirred with a little pinch of turd
Boris Cherny@bcherny
@dedene Coding is solved, bugs are not yet solved. Fix incoming
Boris Cherny@bcherny
tbh this is a good debate to have.
Here is what the timeline of the near past/future looks like to me:
1. Models are able to code better than I can
2. Models are able to do coding-adjacent engineering work better than I can: debugging, profiling, optimizing, bug fixing, system design, abstraction design, ui design, idea generation, etc.
3. Models are able to do most things that can be done on a computer better than most people
For the kinds of coding that I do, Claude has achieved 1 and some (but not all) of 2. It is showing early-ish signs of 3.
This is not the case for all coding yet. If you are Anders Hejlsberg and are a world class expert in compilers and type systems, Claude might not be at 1 yet. My bet would be that it gets there quite soon, while at the same time pushing further into 2-3 territory for the rest of us.
You can think of model capabilities as capturing the distribution of human ability. I consider myself an average programmer so Claude has already surpassed me, but the same is not yet true for everyone.
Back in Nov 2025 I fully stopped writing code by hand, though I continue to code (using agents) every day. That is the point where for me and many others around me, it felt fair to say that coding is solved. But engineering is more than coding. Claude’s code is not perfect. It has bugs and inefficiencies. Claude can code, but it cannot yet do everything that goes into engineering.
Opus 4.8 is the first model that felt like it could code better than me. Fable now routinely finds optimizations and debugs issues that I would not have been able to fix myself. And with each generation, the code the model produces continues to improve, and the model is able to do more of the non-coding parts of engineering.
Here is what the timeline of the near past/future looks like to me:
1. Models are able to code better than I can
2. Models are able to do coding-adjacent engineering work better than I can: debugging, profiling, optimizing, bug fixing, system design, abstraction design, ui design, idea generation, etc.
3. Models are able to do most things that can be done on a computer better than most people
For the kinds of coding that I do, Claude has achieved 1 and some (but not all) of 2. It is showing early-ish signs of 3.
This is not the case for all coding yet. If you are Anders Hejlsberg and are a world class expert in compilers and type systems, Claude might not be at 1 yet. My bet would be that it gets there quite soon, while at the same time pushing further into 2-3 territory for the rest of us.
You can think of model capabilities as capturing the distribution of human ability. I consider myself an average programmer so Claude has already surpassed me, but the same is not yet true for everyone.
Back in Nov 2025 I fully stopped writing code by hand, though I continue to code (using agents) every day. That is the point where for me and many others around me, it felt fair to say that coding is solved. But engineering is more than coding. Claude’s code is not perfect. It has bugs and inefficiencies. Claude can code, but it cannot yet do everything that goes into engineering.
Opus 4.8 is the first model that felt like it could code better than me. Fable now routinely finds optimizations and debugs issues that I would not have been able to fix myself. And with each generation, the code the model produces continues to improve, and the model is able to do more of the non-coding parts of engineering.
