Sam Altman’s Vision: The Future of Software Engineering
VraserX e/acc (@VraserX)
Sam Altman says soon everyone will be a software engineer and he might be right.
Sam Altman just casually dropped one of the biggest takes about the future of work and software and people are still sleeping on it.
Here’s the core idea, and it’s honestly wild:
Natural language is the new syntax You won’t write code. You’ll describe what you want in plain English. Talking to computers becomes the default programming interface.
The end of the “army of developers” No product managers writing specs. No giant dev teams for v1. You describe the app and the AI builds it.
The overnight app You explain your idea, go to sleep, and the AI spends the night writing, testing, and wiring everything together. You wake up and the product exists. Coffee optional but recommended ☕
Autonomous software agents For complex systems, AI agents live inside the codebase itself. They crawl the repo, fix bugs, write tests, refactor code, and commit changes on their own.
A digital workforce that never sleeps Not copilots. Not autocomplete. Actual agents doing ongoing engineering work without supervision.
Beyond coding: total company automation Once software is automated, the same logic applies to operations, planning, and even parts of management. Code is just the first domino.
If this plays out, “learning to code” becomes less important than learning to think clearly, describe intent, and spot good ideas.
Question for you 👀 If everyone can build software, what actually becomes scarce: ideas, taste, or execution?
Replies:
Ventuals (@ventuals) So he described vibe coding?
VraserX e/acc (@VraserX) Not really. This is way beyond vibe coding. It’s basically software on demand.
Emily (@IamEmily2050) I don’t think we can do app like Photoshop this year 🤔🤔🤔
VraserX e/acc (@VraserX) Not this year but 2027 or 2028 all bets are off.
sat chandra | AI & Strategy (@sat266) Everyone will have their own app for their own purposes 😂it would be a deadlock situation . People who have access to energy sources will be more privileged.
VraserX e/acc (@VraserX) I don’t think it’s “everyone has an app” so much as “everyone has an agent.”
You won’t manage software sprawl. The agent abstracts it away. One interface, many capabilities.
On energy you’re right though. Compute + energy becomes the real bottleneck. That’s the new class divide
Sander van Liempd (@sander496) None of those. It’s things like validity, reliability, trust, credibility, transparancy. A true coder can still read and validate the code, spot hidden agendas or intent. The software becomes more reliable when a coder reviews it.
Imagine playing a game written by someone using
VraserX e/acc (@VraserX) You’re describing security and trust problems, not a reason humans must stay the bottleneck. Today we trust compilers, operating systems, cloud infra, and millions of lines of code no single human has ever “read and validated.”
The solution isn’t “only humans can be trusted.”
Androot~ (@OAndroot) I’ve been making or Claude has been making. Very fuzzy, much blur. But we have been making web application tools for personal use. HTML files for personal use just run! I have a prompt forge that lets me randomize a bunch of options for exploring image generation possibilities. I
VraserX e/acc (@VraserX) This is exactly it. We’re already past the “is it possible” phase and deep into the “people are quietly doing it” phase.
My Notes/Thoughts: