---
title: >-
  A bet proposition for Mr. Kevin Roose.  Or: Writing code by hand will still be immesurably more relevant than programming by punchcards in 22 months.
date: 2026-02-15T22:28:40.925Z
slug: 2026-02-15-a-bet-proposition
author: Thomas Wilson-Cook

---
Before I begin, I wish to present three quotes from the most recent episode of the Hardfork Podcast ([link](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/podcasts/something-big-is-happening-ai-rocks-the-romance-novel-industry-one-good-thing.html)):

The first is a prediction from New York Times journalist Kevin Roose:

> I think that by the end of the year, if you are still writing code by hand, that is going to be an obsolete behaviour. 

The second comes later in the episode from Roose.  For context, the co-hosts are interviewing a fiction author using AI to publish several hundred novels a year.  They are discussing the impact of accessible generative AI tools on the publishing industry:

> I’m [Kevin] writing a book and my publisher is a big major publisher and they’ve asked me "you’re not using AI to write any of this?"  And it’s true, I am not using AI for composition, but I’m using it in all kinds of other ways.

And the last is from the podcast’s other co-host, independent journalist Casey Newton:

> As an author, I take some amount of pride in what I create.  It’s one reason why I don’t use AI to write my columns.

There are three big ol’ jars I need to leave shut here:

1. The bemused jar labelled “why do non-developers keep thinking that writing code is the central limiting skill for the folks who build and maintain software systems?"
2. The ancient academic jar of "what exactly do you mean by the words 'write', 'by hand' and 'obsolete'?  Is it 'writing' if I edit someone else' code?  Is it 'by hand' if I dictated it?  Is something more or less obsolete if it's extremely economically efficient but only relevant to one team of ten people?  What if those ten people maintain the nuclear missile infrastructure?”
3. And the low-hanging jar of “is 'smart contract development' as popular a skillset now as you’d have predicted it would be three years ago, Kevin?” 

And instead I would like to offer Kevin Roose, personally, a bet of one thousand Great British pounds sterling if, at the end of the year 2027, he can produce stronger evidence for the claim that “writing code by hand has become an obsolete behaviour for software developers” than the counter statement “writing code by hand is a relevant behaviour for software developers”.  I request that the evidence be judged by a panel of five people, each of whom:

1. Is a practicing, professional software developer.  These are the people who will be able to determine what is/not an obsolete behaviour for that profession.
2. Started working as developers before the release of ChatGPT.  These are people who have a higher chance of having written everything by hand and then transitioned to this glorious future where nothing needs to be written by hand.  They’ll be able to make the comparison.
3. Has no employment history inside the generative AI industry.  These cannot be people who have a vested interest in generative AI having a greater perceived importance or competence than it actually has.

I think you’re making a very strong prediction.  You’re saying that much like writing code on punchcards, or knowing about vacuum tubes, writing code directly into a text editor will be an obsolete skill.  In fact, people would have written their code by hand and then made it into a punch card.  We’ve been writing code by hand for _so long_, Kevin.

I am also utterly convinced that you’re wrong.
