Developing native Apple apps is generally much slower and tedious with agents than building web applications. That said, platform constraints can be liberating—with exactly one or two possible ways to accomplish something, an agent can monkey-on-typewriter until it figures it out
Matt Swanson had me back on YAGNI to talk about the fallout from DHH's Rails World keynote and what it means for your weekend. We discuss what happens to the "one-person framework" when agents write the code, how frustrating it is when something is absolutely correct but still misses the point, and how I've accidentally constructed a dark factory with agents building and maintaining my iOS apps.
We also get into what I'd tell developers who are worried about where all this is heading and why World of Warcraft is my dark horse candidate to beat Grand Theft Auto 6 in November.
Appearing on: YAGNI
Published on: 2026-10-02
Original URL: https://share.transistor.fm/s/192793fc
Comments? Questions? Suggestion of a podcast I should guest on? podcast@searls.co or send feedback.
Interviewing Zach Holman this morning on Hot Fix about AI and our discontents. Have something you want us to talk about? Let me know: justin.searls.co/feedback/
The vast majority of programmers are late adopters. They don't follow programming news. They show up, do the job, go home. They may hear about things through the grapevine. They might go to a conference every 2 years. But they typically don't take the time to play with new stuff
I complete agree coding agents make software engineering harder, but the rub is that many professional software engineers are pretty bad at these new hard things and it's hard to see how they're not totally screwed. simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/24/harder/
I read way too many comments about DHH's Rails World keynote, and the substantive arguments seem pretty thin. Some people who love Ruby and Rails seem to feel disappointed/depressed/afraid to be told the things they care about don't matter anymore. reddit.com/r/rails
For seemingly the sixth time in my career, DHH has arrived at the same conclusion I have—this time, that AI coding means we should be building more native apps, because development cost is no longer the bottleneck—but the way he goes about talking about it couldn't be more different youtu.be/vDjW_dRyKXY?t=1457&is=t5lg25x_naMgYtEB