Lenny RachitskyHost of Lenny's Podcast | Author of Lenny's Newsletter

Software engineers are like wizards

15 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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Software engineers are wizards casting spells through code. Each generation of programming tools makes commanding computers easier, and AI assistants like Codex represent the next step: senior engineers running multiple AI threads can achieve dramatically higher leverage, but only if they're skilled enough to keep the models on track.

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Software engineers are like wizards. Programming languages are like incantations. You're issuing these spells, and these spells are kind of like going out and doing things for you. And the challenge is like, what incantation do you have to say to make the program do what you want? I think that metaphor has actually persisted over time, and I think it's actually playing out as we move into this new era of vibe coding, or just like what software engineering will look like. Because programming languages were basically these incantations, they've changed over time. The trend has been that it's been easier and easier to get the computer to do what you want via programming. The current wave of AI is probably the next stage of that evolution. When I See Engine these 20 different Codex threads at a time, there is some skill and there's some seniority and a lot of thought that needs to go into this because you want to make sure that the models aren't going off the rails. But it's also extremely high leverage. A very senior engineer who's really proficient with these tools can now just do way more things via what they're doing.