How AI Is Changing Code - Paul Ford with Nicholas Thompson

About this episode

Paul Ford discusses with Nicholas Thompson how AI is transforming coding and its implications for engineers and businesses.

In the last year, AI has arguably made more progress in coding than in any other domain. Its technical capabilities – harnessed through apps like Codex and Claude Code – have changed the way engineers work. Boris Cherny, Anthropic’s head of Claude Code, claims that 100% of his output is now generated by AI. But what does the rapid advance in coding tools mean for engineers and businesses? To answer that, Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, sits down with engineer, author, and entrepreneur Paul Ford. The two discuss how AI has changed his work, its implications for a range of industries, and their missed opportunity to start a billion-dollar business (maybe). (00:00) Introduction (01:53) Writing vs. Engineering: Which profession has been transformed more by AI? (03:23) The pitfalls of AI writing and the limits of AI agents (04:09) How AI has changed the code development business model (09:01) "Vibe coding": Paul Ford's personal experience building products through AI prompts (10:47) "Death is coming" - The feeling of watching entire industries dissolve (12:54) Where consensus programming thrives under AI assistance, and where it struggles (15:18) Why making good software…

People in this episode

Host: Nicholas Thompson

Guest: Paul Ford

Topics covered

• AI in coding
• impact of AI on engineering
• business models in software development
• AI-generated code
• challenges of AI in software
• future of coding with AI

Keywords

• AI
• coding
• software development
• engineering
• business impact
• AI tools
• Codex
• Claude Code

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Anthropic

Products: Codex, Claude Code

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