by Jason Snell

Lex authors the apps, but Claude writes the code

Back in June, I tried to elaborate on why building software is more than coding in an age of AI coding assistants:

Whatever you call it, whether it’s being a producer or product manager or something else that isn’t a programmer, creating good software in the AI era still requires the power of a human brain: being creative, solving problems, and making decisions. Some people will be better at it than others. It’s a skill, and a bit of an art. I’m excited that modern coding tools have given people with vision and desire the ability to make software.

My friend Lex Friedman, who is staggeringly productive at releasing apps, decided to address a social-media comment about how that productivity was “suspicious” on his tech blog, and in doing so, detailed how much of his app building was Claude and how much was his own background as a developer and user of computer software:

The question, to me, isn’t how much code was written by a human. It’s how much the app was authored by a human, which I think is a more nuanced question. How much care, thought, and humanity went into the app matters far more than tabs vs. spaces or a manually-vs.-machine-built HStack.

This is the truth of it. Slapping a quick prompt into Claude is not going to get you good software. Envisioning how a product should work, in detail, is hard work—and not everyone is going to be good at it, or want to do it. If pure coding skill is no longer the differentiator it was, taste and organization and attention to detail and many other intangible features that great developers have always had will still matter.