Drew Breunig:
I'm lucky enough to talk to a range of developers and teams, spanning a variety of company sizes and a broad array of skill sets. From these conversations, two beliefs have emerged and solidified about coding agents and their (current) impact on coding.
Drew makes two very astute observations, both of which I endorse. The first one in particular is under-appreciated:
Most talented developers do not appreciate the impact of the intuitive knowledge they bring to their coding agent.
Coding agents are amplifiers of skills of the engineers that wield them, they are not magic beans that'll let an amateur cook up a compiler.
The second observation should be obvious to anyone who has built software products, but somehow the current mania is making people ignore it:
Most work people are sharing are incredible personal tools, but they are not capital-P products.