Coding is largely solved, they say

What is the strategy of Claude Code?

There’s a new trend in AI coding tools that I’ve been thinking through recently. Since around 2023 I’ve used various assistants daily — it started with Microsoft Copilot, which I was genuinely happy with for a long time. It handled the boring, tedious syntax work and got out of the way. Then, a few months ago, I came across Boris Cherny’s bold claim that ‘Coding is largely solved’, which low-key upset me as it was wildly out of sync with my own experience and basically motivated me to give it a try (so the marketing worked, Anthropic, well done!). I was honestly impressed.

Agents of new masters

It’s a remarkable tool. But what struck me wasn’t its capability — it was the design philosophy behind it. It no longer acts as an assistant to the developer. It takes the seat. The interface — terminal or chat box — keeps the user at arm’s length while the agents work as a black box, producing output that’s sometimes impressive, sometimes questionable, but always on their own terms. The power dynamic has quietly shifted. This isn’t about empowering developers. It’s about replacing them.

Dependency instead of empowerment

I understand there are people who would happily be rid of programmers: they are often arrogant, expensive, hard to communicate with, a persistent headache in almost every company. But the satisfaction might be premature.

This design has been sold as a necessary step toward making agents more productive. Fair enough. But it carries another effect: whoever uses the agents becomes entirely dependent on them. If the agents can’t resolve an issue, there is no resolution. If Anthropic decides to expand context usage, the cost of everything the agents touch rises overnight — beyond anyone’s control. The programmer who once held the levers, and now the business owner who thought they’d cut out the middleman, both find themselves in the same position: no visibility, no independence, no fallback. The tool is designed to make that dependency feel like progress.