How AI is changing software development with Simon Willison

Simon Willison, creator of Datasette and co-creator of Django, said on Episode 42 of the Talking Postgres podcast that his gold standard for shipping AI-generated code is "Could I explain this to somebody else?" Willison described how the bottleneck in software development has shifted from writing code to understanding it, noting that engineering management skills prove useful for managing AI agents and that "Features are cheap. That doesn't mean you should build them all.

What’s your gold standard for deciding whether AI-written code is ready for production? In Episode 42 of Talking Postgres, Simon Willison https://simonwillison.net/ —creator of Datasette, co-creator of Django, and prolific open-source developer—joins Claire https://www.linkedin.com/in/claireg/ to share how AI is changing the way he builds software today. We dig into why his test for shipping AI-generated code is “Could I explain this to somebody else?”, how engineering management skills can be surprisingly useful when managing AI agents, and how the bottleneck is no longer writing code but understanding it. Also: personal credibility, deep research, the Winchester Mystery House, slop proxies, and Simon’s observation that “Features are cheap. That doesn’t mean you should build them all.” Previously on Talking Postgres: Links mentioned in this episode: In this episode, we covered: 00:00 Intro & music 04:00 A week of work before breakfast 09:12 Red-green TDD makes agents exercise every line 14:42 A million lines mean nothing if you don’t understand it 18:28 Finding low-hanging fruit among open PRs & issues 22:07 Getting work done while walking the dog 23:01 Gold standard: “Could I explain this to somebody else?” 28:27 Slop proxies add no value at all 30:49 Aggressive nitpicking reviews 35:01 Everything in software engineering is about trade-offs 41:16 Racoon heist game is only fun for 1 minute 15 seconds 43:46 New Year’s resolution to be more ambitious 48:11 You have to learn to throw things away 51:57 Features are cheap. That doesn’t mean you should build them all 1:00:45 Engineering management skills are so useful 1:04:44 QA specialists should be having a great time 1:07:53 Writing is thinking, don’t outsource it 1:08:23 Skill atrophy is a choice you make 1:10:07 I believe in people who are motivated 1:11:55 Systems are not set up to deal with this volume 1:18:48 Research agents stopped being absolute garbage 1:21:49 The whole point of the “human in the loop” 1:26:10 Dream: I want there to be more small businesses