Okay so you have no names of experienced developers saying that coding agents are now useful when they weren't before. The only two you have actually saying that are... not working as software engineers.
> 2025 was a weird year for me. If you had asked me exactly a year ago, I would have said I thought LLMs were amusing toys but inappropriate for real software development. [...]
Today, I would say that about 90% of my code is authored by Claude Code.
> I don't think you are arguing in good faith here.
Funny coming from a guy using Linus saying "There's no doubt AI is useful today" and interpreting that as "Yeah last year AI coding agents were garbage but now they're really useful".
There's no denying AI is useful. I use AI, my project at work is all about using LLMs. They're even useful for coding, when I don't give a fuck about the quality of the output (which is almost never in a work scenario).
But to claim that there has been some magical shift late last year is simply laughable. Anyone working as a software engineer and claims that is either lying to themselves or simply bad.
Oh and don't try with the "you're not prompting it right".
Max Woolf and DHH are clearly experienced developers who continue to write code for money.
Linus too - 11 commits to the kernel today! https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commits?author=torvalds
Plus this very thread is full of experienced developers who are saying that "coding agents are now useful when they weren't before":
- ACS_Solver: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49052570#49057367
- suzzer99: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49052570#49060743
- IshKebab: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49052570#49056074
- smrtinsert: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49052570#49055294
- qarl2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49052570#49053318
A few bonuses:
Mitchell Hashimoto: https://mitchellh.com/writing/my-ai-adoption-journey
> While I was still a heavy AI skeptic [... through to ...] At this point I was firmly in the "no way I can go back" territory.
Steve Klabnik: https://steveklabnik.com/writing/getting-started-with-claude...
> 2025 was an interesting year in many ways. One way in which it was interesting for me is that I went from an AI hater to a pretty big user.
Nolan Lawson: https://nolanlawson.com/2026/01/24/ai-tribalism/
> 2025 was a weird year for me. If you had asked me exactly a year ago, I would have said I thought LLMs were amusing toys but inappropriate for real software development. [...] Today, I would say that about 90% of my code is authored by Claude Code.