AI Timeline - Part 2
If you haven't read AI Timeline - Part 1 then I reccomend beginning there first. You're a grown up though, so you do you and start wherever you want.
Let's see ... where were we?
Oh yeah! We were talking about AI in 2023; hanging out with our AI buddies. We were excited about the future of AI and how we could incorprate it more into our careers and lives.
2024-2025
2024 and 2025 began the years of slowly adopting AI into our code writing.
You: "So, it wrote all of your code for you in 2024 and 2025?"
Me: "Nope."
It got better at filling in functions when prompted. I used Cursor quite a bit at the time and would pause during code writing to ask it questions (that normally I would hit google or stack overflow to help answer). Having an AI right in my Integrated Development Environment (like an editor for writing programs) was quite helpful.
Throughout most of 2025, I would say things like:
"AI isn't all there yet".
"It's cool, but it hallucinates too much"
"I've tried running it locally, yeah, it's sooooooo slow!"
End of 2025
Nothing could have prepared me for what was to come. Nothing. If you would have told me ten years ago that I'd be using an LLM to write code for me, I would have said, "What's an LLM". Then, after you explained it to me, I would probably just have deadpan stared at you. Even two, five, or ten years ago, I wouldn't have believed you.
You: "So, in late 2025 AI wrote all of your code?"
Me: "Well ... not quite (for me at least)"
That's about the time I began using Claude Code. We would work with Claude Code to investigate our code projects and have it write some pieces. It did OK, but on any day, it was like asking a schizophrenic developer to assist in writing some code. Yeah. I remember one time working through adding some new CRUD operations to a service and for one of the methods it wrote a nice comment:
// Fill this in yourself
Yeah, it did crap like that.
I noticed other engineers at my company submitting merge requests where I could tell pieces were written by an AI. Little things gave it away like the comments it would make, it would go outside best practices established in the project it was working in, it would ignore UI components and write its own. Things like that. Was it wrong? Not really, but I would comment on the MRs and note that we had established ways of doing things that made it much easier to read and maintain. The code they had submitted was fine -- it worked, but we spent a long time coming up with standards and best practices to follow so that any engineer could dive in and contribute.
This is fine
Who has a morning routine? You? Yeah, I do to. I get up, drink coffee and usually consume some sort of content be it news, something my brain has deemed worthy of a click on Reddit, and perhaps a little daily web game. The same probably applies to your job. You get used to it. You do it every day, and if you're like me then (for the most part) you usually enjoy it.
Now, I want you to imagine an atom bomb has gone off. You know, like that black and white video we've all seen of the trees being bent over and the house getting blown away from the force of the explosion.
You: "Wait, you're being a little extreme ... aren't you?"
Me: "No!"
I started writing code in middle and high school years (1990s), got a degree in computer science, and away I went. I won't bore you with all of the details, but writing code became an art form to me. A way of self expression. I would always ask myself, "Could someone open this code, read a little bit of it and immediately begin to grasp it"? Would they think this is well organized and clean?
But, I digress. How did we get here?
You: "Was there a turning point?"
Me: "I feel like Anthropic's release of Claude 4.5 and 4.6 was when this happened."
You: "How did it change things for you?"
Me: "Well, since 2023, it goes like this ...
- "I use AI to assist with about 10% of the code I write"
- "I use AI to write about 30-40% of my code"
- and now, "I use AI to write 100% of my code"
You: "So, NOW! Now AI writes all of your code?"
Me: "Yep"
So, here we are ... in 2026, with our AI that writes all of our code, performs architecture design, code planning, MR creation, MR reviews, bug investigations, all the things. This is fine?