"Using coding agents well is taking every inch of my 25 years of experience as a software engineer."
Simon Willison (
@simonw) is one of the most prolific independent software engineers and most trusted voices on how AI is changing the craft of building software. He co-created Django, coined the term "prompt injection," and popularized the terms "agentic engineering" and "AI slop."
In our in-depth conversation, we discuss:
🔸 Why November 2025 was an inflection point
🔸 The "dark factory" pattern
🔸 Why mid-career engineers (not juniors) are the most at risk right now
🔸 Three agentic engineering patterns he uses daily: red/green TDD, thin templates, hoarding
🔸 Why he writes 95% of his code from his phone while walking the dog
🔸 Why he thinks we're headed for an AI Challenger disaster
🔸 How a pelican riding a bicycle became the unofficial benchmark for AI model quality
Listen now 👇
youtu.be/wc8FBhQtdsA