The future of code is exciting and terrifying

A new era of software development is upon us. Career coders are no longer writing code, but rather managing teams of agents that do the work on their behalf. You can Claude Code your way through seemingly just about any problem. So what does that mean for the software we use, and the people who make it? Paul Ford, a writer and technologist who both writes about code and manages a team of coders, joins the show to explain his somewhat conflicted excitement about the new crop of AI tools, and his worries about what they’ll do to the world. After that, The Verge’s Dominic Preston helps answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email ⁠vergecast@theverge.com⁠!) about the differences between the US phone market and the global phone market, and whether US buyers are missing anything important. Further reading: ⁠The A.I. Disruption Has Arrived, and It Sure Is Fun⁠ ⁠Claude has been having a moment — can it keep it up?⁠ ⁠How the creator of Claude Code sees the future of AI⁠ ⁠Ftrain⁠ From Bloomberg: ⁠What Is Code?⁠ ⁠Xiaomi, unlike Google and Samsung, thinks camera hardware comes first⁠ ⁠Oppo’s new foldable isn’t quite creaseless, but it’s pretty damn close⁠ ⁠Honor’s Robot Phone is a bad robot, interesting camera, maybe a friend⁠ ⁠Vivo and Oppo’s telephoto extender comes to iPhone⁠ ⁠

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The future of code is exciting and terrifying is an episode from Vergecast by Vox Media Podcast Network.

This episode is 66:45 long.

This episode was published on Mar 17, 2026.

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