DHH says Dario Amodei turned out to be right, maybe even a little cautious, about AI doing most of software engineering within a year
Dario turned out to be right. Maybe even a little cautious. But look at the comments. All so very convinced that they knew more and better, and what an idiot he was.
Context
A prominent programmer who long criticized AI hype is now saying a bold timeline from Anthropic's CEO has largely held up, a notable shift in the debate about coding jobs.
DHH, David Heinemeier Hansson, created the Ruby on Rails framework and cofounded 37signals, the company behind Basecamp. He was quoting a January post by Wes Roth with a clip of Dario Amodei at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Amodei is the CEO of Anthropic, which makes the Claude Code coding agent.
Deep dive
On October 12, DHH quoted a January post about Dario Amodei's Davos prediction and wrote: Dario turned out to be right. Maybe even a little cautious. He added that the replies at the time were all so very convinced that they knew more and better, and what an idiot he was.
According to Hindustan Times, Amodei said in a World Economic Forum session with Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis that he had engineers at Anthropic who no longer write code and instead let the model write it and edit it. He said, I think, I don't know, we might be six to twelve months away from when the model is doing most, maybe all of what SWEs do end to end, and stressed that there was a lot of uncertainty.
That was in January, so his window runs to roughly now. DHH did not offer data, and whether models today do most of what software engineers do end to end is still disputed. Many teams report AI writing a large share of their code, while engineers still set requirements, review output and make design decisions.
The post stands out because DHH has often been skeptical of industry claims, and he is now crediting a forecast that many developers mocked.
What to expect next
Watch for hard evidence on whether AI agents now handle most software engineering end to end, such as company disclosures of AI written code, hiring data for engineers and results on realistic benchmarks.
Also watch whether Amodei or Anthropic claim the prediction has come true, and how Hassabis, who expected a slower timeline at Davos, and other skeptics respond as the year closes.