Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt believes the era of software engineers writing the code manually is rapidly coming to an end. Speaking at a recent industry conference, Eric Schmidt said artificial intelligence has completely transformed the way modern programming works, warning developers and companies that traditional coding methods are already becoming outdated.
"If you're writing code in any traditional way: stop. It's over," Schmidt urged.
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Eric Schmidt says programmers are now managing AI, not typing code #
According to Schmidt, top software engineers today no longer spend their days writing code line by line. Rather, they supervise multiple AI systems that generate and test code automatically.
He described how developers increasingly rely on AI tools like Claude and Gemini, assigning them tasks and monitoring their output rather than coding everything manually.
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“And what's happened. I'll give you an example. So, the way programming is done at the state of the art now is the programmer wakes up goes to the office? Because they're social, and they sit there, but they don't have that many friends. So they sit in their office, and they collect 10 Claude friends or 10 Gemini friends. And they set them up with objective functions, and they watch what they wrote the code that they write,” he told the gathering.
Schmidt added that programmers now give AI assistants long tasks before going for lunch or even leaving for the day, allowing the systems to continue working independently.
“Then they go out to lunch, and they make sure that they have long enough tasks that they continue working while they're having lunch. So, then go back to the office, and they do this, and then it's time to go home to see the family and so forth, and they set up an objective function of this is what I want you to do,” he explained.
‘I’m in mourning’: Schmidt reflects on the end of traditional programming #
The former Google CEO admitted the shift has been deeply personal for him because he started programming as a teenager and built his entire career around coding.
“I'll just confess what's really going on in my mind? I'm in mourning. And I've been mourning because I started as a programmer when I was basically 13 or 14, and that is essentially over. Right, how in how can your entire identity and life's career as a programmer? Computer scientist be over in one lifetime. It's supposed to be like your children or your grandchildren,” he said in a video posted online.
Schmidt warns companies to rethink engineering teams #
Schmidt said the transformation accelerated quickly around October last year and warned businesses that software teams still working the old way may soon struggle to keep up.
He even suggested managers question why engineers are coding the same way they did only a few months ago. “If you manage a company and you have software engineers, say, 'Why are you still writing code the way you did it six months ago?'”