GitHub CEO: Future devs will not code, they will manage AI
(2025/08/07)
- Reference: 1754558107
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/08/07/github_ceo_ai_coding/
- Source link:
GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke has stated in a [1]personal blog that the most advanced developers have "moved from writing code to architecting and verifying the implementation work that is carried out by AI agents."
The post follows [2]one from March when Dohmke repeated Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's assertion that "in a short time, 90-100 percent of all code will be written by AI."
Referencing recent interviews with 22 developers using AI tools, Dohmke identified four stages to AI developer maturity, from skeptic, to explorer, to collaborator, and finally strategist. In this last stage, developers no longer write code, having delegated that task to AI agents, but focus on refining prompts and reviewing and validating the generated implementation.
[3]
Dohmke acknowledges that AI output must be scrutinized and suggests that developers need to understand programming basics, algorithms, and data structures, and that they continue to perform "manual code review." How they will acquire these skills in future is less certain, since he sees computer science education changing to be about understanding systems, debugging AI-generated code, and expressing ideas clearly both to people and to large language models (LLMs). Abstraction, decomposition, and specification must be taught not as pre-coding steps, but as "the new coding," he wrote.
[4]
[5]
It is a rose-tinted view of the future of AI-driven coding, and one that Dohmke no doubt hopes will persuade businesses of the value of GitHub Copilot subscriptions.
More nuanced views of AI coding include issues such as research showing that it can [6]erode code quality . There are also new security issues such as those [7]listed by OWASP (open source foundation for software security), which includes prompt injection, sensitive information disclosure, supply chain compromise, and data or model poisoning.
[8]Freelance dev shop Toptal caught serving malware after GitHub account break-in
[9]Microsoft-owned GitHub: Open source needs funding. Ya think?
[10]GitHub command palette wins stay of execution after dev pushback
[11]New GitHub Copilot limits push AI users to pricier tiers
There is also the open question of what happens when AI models are trained on the output from AI models. In 2023, research from Rice University and Stanford University [12]suggested that "without enough fresh real data in each generation of an autophagous loop, future generative models are doomed to have their quality (precision) or diversity (recall) progressively decrease."
That downsides exist is not a reason to reject AI coding, but does suggest that a rapid move towards AI dominance in this field may be a mistake.
[13]
In the meantime, the Microsoft-owned GitHub platform appears to be getting worse, according to a [14]discussion on Hacker News. "GitHub's performance has been rapidly degrading ever since they started rewriting everything in React," [15]said one developer.
Another [16]claimed : "I worked at GitHub for three years and they are very aware that slowness is a big issue throughout the whole product. There was a year-long cross-team effort to improve things but the main goals were not achieved."
Developers will hope that the drive towards Copilot and AI features is not detrimental to the resource dedicated to maintaining the core GitHub platform. ®
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[1] https://ashtom.github.io/developers-reinvented
[2] https://ashtom.github.io/showercoding
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[6] https://devclass.com/2025/02/20/ai-is-eroding-code-quality-states-new-in-depth-report/
[7] https://genai.owasp.org/resource/owasp-top-10-for-llm-applications-2025/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/25/toptal_malware_attack/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/24/microsoftowned_github_says_open_source/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/22/github_command_palette_backtrack/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/20/github_begins_enforcing_premium_request/
[12] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.01850
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[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The post follows [2]one from March when Dohmke repeated Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's assertion that "in a short time, 90-100 percent of all code will be written by AI."
Referencing recent interviews with 22 developers using AI tools, Dohmke identified four stages to AI developer maturity, from skeptic, to explorer, to collaborator, and finally strategist. In this last stage, developers no longer write code, having delegated that task to AI agents, but focus on refining prompts and reviewing and validating the generated implementation.
[3]
Dohmke acknowledges that AI output must be scrutinized and suggests that developers need to understand programming basics, algorithms, and data structures, and that they continue to perform "manual code review." How they will acquire these skills in future is less certain, since he sees computer science education changing to be about understanding systems, debugging AI-generated code, and expressing ideas clearly both to people and to large language models (LLMs). Abstraction, decomposition, and specification must be taught not as pre-coding steps, but as "the new coding," he wrote.
[4]
[5]
It is a rose-tinted view of the future of AI-driven coding, and one that Dohmke no doubt hopes will persuade businesses of the value of GitHub Copilot subscriptions.
More nuanced views of AI coding include issues such as research showing that it can [6]erode code quality . There are also new security issues such as those [7]listed by OWASP (open source foundation for software security), which includes prompt injection, sensitive information disclosure, supply chain compromise, and data or model poisoning.
[8]Freelance dev shop Toptal caught serving malware after GitHub account break-in
[9]Microsoft-owned GitHub: Open source needs funding. Ya think?
[10]GitHub command palette wins stay of execution after dev pushback
[11]New GitHub Copilot limits push AI users to pricier tiers
There is also the open question of what happens when AI models are trained on the output from AI models. In 2023, research from Rice University and Stanford University [12]suggested that "without enough fresh real data in each generation of an autophagous loop, future generative models are doomed to have their quality (precision) or diversity (recall) progressively decrease."
That downsides exist is not a reason to reject AI coding, but does suggest that a rapid move towards AI dominance in this field may be a mistake.
[13]
In the meantime, the Microsoft-owned GitHub platform appears to be getting worse, according to a [14]discussion on Hacker News. "GitHub's performance has been rapidly degrading ever since they started rewriting everything in React," [15]said one developer.
Another [16]claimed : "I worked at GitHub for three years and they are very aware that slowness is a big issue throughout the whole product. There was a year-long cross-team effort to improve things but the main goals were not achieved."
Developers will hope that the drive towards Copilot and AI features is not detrimental to the resource dedicated to maintaining the core GitHub platform. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://ashtom.github.io/developers-reinvented
[2] https://ashtom.github.io/showercoding
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/devops&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aJR5OdEybkErEIMKXX7MWgAAAQM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[6] https://devclass.com/2025/02/20/ai-is-eroding-code-quality-states-new-in-depth-report/
[7] https://genai.owasp.org/resource/owasp-top-10-for-llm-applications-2025/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/25/toptal_malware_attack/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/24/microsoftowned_github_says_open_source/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/22/github_command_palette_backtrack/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/20/github_begins_enforcing_premium_request/
[12] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.01850
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/devops&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aJR5OdEybkErEIMKXX7MWgAAAQM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44799861
[15] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44800095
[16] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44800954
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
If future devs "will not code"...
theOtherJT
...then how will they know that the code that the AI produces is any good?
There's three secrets alone to being good at anything: Practice, Practice, and Practice. If you're not writing any code those coding skills you supposedly learned when trying to become a developer in the first place will atrophy and die - and then you won't know if the code the AI has produced for you is any good. At best you'll be able to prove it passes some unit tests - but then those were probably written by the AI too, so who knows if those are working as expected?
We're already seeing how hard it is to get good senior engineers in any number of fields because people have been cheaping out on hiring and training juniors for years, and if there were no juniors to learn and - yes, practice - then the pool of qualified seniors gets smaller and smaller. AI only accelerates this process; people can get quick easy results, but fail to learn anything. As soon as the AI goes off the well trodden path and breaks down the people using it won't understand why or know what to do about it, because they don't have the experience necessary to work it out.
CEOspeak
b0llchit
Blabla bla magic bla blabla Magical magic bla bla magic bla magic.
Dumb fucks fall for dumb stuff and promises of dumber stuff "apparently" costing less. People have not changed in thousands of years.
Can't wait to be a former developer
It's great that they're getting rid of the part of my job as a developer that I enjoy, writing code, but keeping the boring life-sapping drudge of code review. That's brilliant. Thanks Github. I hope your lives end up as joyless, empty, and grey as the one you seek to inflict on us.
AI looks good to incompetent developers because to them average is a big improvement, to any average or better programmer it's at best neutral. For a more level-headed examination of how AI works for engineers this post from Colton Voege is pretty great: [1]No, AI is not Making Engineers 10x as Productive.
[1] https://colton.dev/blog/curing-your-ai-10x-engineer-imposter-syndrome/