Dave Thomas is one of the authors of The Pragmatic Programmer, one of the key people who brought Ruby from Japan to the western world (through "the pickaxe book", Programming Ruby), one of the authors of the Agile manifesto, and one of my software heros, among other things.
Like many of the original Agile manifesto writers, he's pretty excited about how LLMs/Agents are opening up more possibilities, not ending the software profession.
"Castles in the Air: It's Still Just as Rewarding
It's Still Programming
I was expecting to hate using Claude. I just knew it would dehumanize the process, draining away all the fun stuff, turning what was once creative into a mechanical slog.
I was wrong. Coding with AI is fun. In fact, to me it feels like I'm having more fun than I have had in a while. So I took some notes over the last month to work out why.”
#agenticAI
https://media.pragprog.com/newsletters/2026-03-25.html