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Quoting Les Orchard

Simon Willison's Blog / 3/13/2026

💬 OpinionSignals & Early TrendsIdeas & Deep Analysis

Key Points

  • AI-assisted coding is revealing a divide among developers between those who focus on directing what gets built and those who hand-craft code, making underlying motivations more visible.
  • Before AI, both camps did the same daily work with the same tools and workflows, so the split was less visible.
  • The fork occurs at the point where machines can write code versus when humans manually craft it, leading to divergent workflows and product outcomes.
  • This shift implies changes in collaboration, hiring, and decision-making as teams adapt to AI-enabled coding practices.
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12th March 2026

Here's what I think is happening: AI-assisted coding is exposing a divide among developers that was always there but maybe less visible.

Before AI, both camps were doing the same thing every day. Writing code by hand. Using the same editors, the same languages, the same pull request workflows. The craft-lovers and the make-it-go people sat next to each other, shipped the same products, looked indistinguishable. The motivation behind the work was invisible because the process was identical.

Now there's a fork in the road. You can let the machine write the code and focus on directing what gets built, or you can insist on hand-crafting it. And suddenly the reason you got into this in the first place becomes visible, because the two camps are making different choices at that fork.

Les Orchard, Grief and the AI Split

Posted 12th March 2026 at 4:28 pm