Has David Heinemeier Hansson Written Bash Lately?

David Heinemeier Hansson has not written any bash himself for a couple of months. Coding agents have gotten so good that a few pointers on style and an occasional pushback on complexity are enough.

An agent can finish a task, a second agent can review it, and both can call the work done. He then calls the result a little too complicated. The agent agrees it overcomplicated the job and cuts the solution in half. People work the same way: after a review that calls something complicated, the author often sees the simpler version. The intuition is why a programmer is still needed. When he builds software, he looks at the code, the shape, and the proportions. He no longer has to chisel every line himself. The role feels like an editor, or like DaVinci telling a studio of students that the proportions are not quite right. He can say when the argument does not land, when the shape is not proportional to the problem, or when the result feels too complicated. Shockingly often, the simpler version works.

The harnesses now run automated testing and collect the feedback, so he no longer has to tell agents not to make mistakes. He does still have to tell them to make it simpler.