Control and Power: Coding, AI, and Descending a Scree Slope

Summary

Bill Klein reflects on how large language models and coding agents are changing software development and his own relationship with programming. He compares the transition to earlier technologies that displaced established skills, such as photography’s effect on portrait miniature painters and the disappearance of “computer” as a human occupation. For him, programming was valuable partly because it offered fine-grained control: he could hold a problem in mind, express it in formal language, and make a computer act precisely. Coding agents reverse that direction by taking high-level descriptions as input and producing powerful programs, leaving much of the developer’s control to repeated prompting and iteration. Klein argues that the rapid pace of progress also keeps changing both the goals developers pursue and the methods available to them, while creating pressure to work faster. He describes building an internal system called Edgar to autonomously handle a large share of routine software-development tasks for him and his colleagues. The system has made them more productive, but also busier, and it increasingly asks humans to handle tasks requiring trusted judgment. The essay frames this as power without much control: a destabilizing condition that requires humility, receptiveness, and willingness to adapt rather than an attempt to regain a fixed position.