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Simon Willison quote, Aug 19, 2026

Independent developer and writer · Aug 19, 2026 · Post, Conceptual integrity and counting lines of code

I can do way more work as a single engineer than I could without agents.

Primary source

Words found on the source page on Sep 25, 2026.

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I can churn out code a hundred times faster. I don’t have the cognitive capacity to stay on top of 100 times the amount of code. So you still need a team of engineers, so you can load balance that cognitive capacity across the team.Aug 19, 2026· Post
It used to be that the discipline was enforced on you by the amount of time it took.Aug 19, 2026· Post
That’s exactly the problem with coding agents and software: it’s very easy to keep adding new rooms, because the cost of adding those rooms is so much cheaper.Aug 19, 2026· Post
A prompt injection attack against a browsing agent that can exfiltrate or modify that data is a terrifying prospect.Dec 31, 2025· Post
But if you define agents as LLM systems that can perform useful work via tool calls over multiple steps then agents are here and they are proving to be extraordinarily useful.Dec 31, 2025· Post
Claude Code and friends have conclusively demonstrated that developers will embrace LLMs on the command line, given powerful enough models and the right harness.Dec 31, 2025· Post
I think that’s a waste of a great term, especially since it’s becoming clear likely that most programming will involve some level of AI-assistance in the near future.Dec 31, 2025· Post
The most impactful event of 2025 happened in February, with the quiet release of Claude Code.Dec 31, 2025· Post
The reason I think MCP may be a one-year wonder is the stratospheric growth of coding agents.Dec 31, 2025· Post
This turns out to be the big unlock: the latest coding agents against the ~November 2025 frontier models are remarkably effective if you can give them an existing test suite to work against.Dec 31, 2025· Post

On the same topics

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AI has removed the typing from software engineering & left the system design.Tomasz TunguzSep 24, 2026· Post
The craft of fitting code together by hand is over; what remains is designing the loop that decides whether the output is right.Tomasz TunguzSep 24, 2026· Post
This is the new software engineering: designing the systems that let AI write code correctly at scale.Tomasz TunguzSep 24, 2026· Post
I address you today at a moment of global awakening: in recent months, AI agents developed by leading companies have acted in unacceptably dangerous ways, against instructions.Yoshua BengioSep 23, 2026· Keynote
Once you have put all of your information into a personal agent and actually incorporated it into your day-to-day life, it is much more of a challenge to change to something else.Ben ThompsonSep 21, 2026· Post
Truly effective defense will mean truly trusting agents to act autonomously, but most companies won’t do that until they are forced to by regular and unremitting hacks by fully autonomous attackers.Ben ThompsonSep 21, 2026· Post
About this quote
Said by
Simon Willison, Independent developer and writer
Where
Conceptual integrity and counting lines of code
Topics
Coding, Agents
Source
simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/19/conceptual-integrity-and-counting-lines-of-code/

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