How many windows will we have open?
A dominant AI-assisted work style is characterized by lots of windows and notification. The user, in an ironic exaggeration of manager mode, goes from interruption to interruption, responding to each in turn. People are advocating for everything from fancy multi-monitor setups to building exercise regimens to get better at this.1
But here's a case that the future of programming won't look like that:
- Some of those interruptions are obvious permission approvals, which we'll get better at preventing.
- More broadly, we'll trust AI more in cases where it's currently asking for our help. This might be because the AI is more trustworthy (or at least more confident), or because one of the many schemes for using AI tools to check each other catches on.1
- Tools are getting faster, and more and more operations that currently require interrupts will feel synchronous. (I've worked with Claude on
/fastmode and in situations where Codex is very fast, and I've found it striking how much it encouraged me to keep my attention on a single session.) - Tools will get better at showing us important information as they work. Thinking about that information as it goes by, which is already underrated, will get more valuable.
Many hard-to-predict issues will interact to determine the future texture of programming, which might also develop more distinctive sub-disciplines and merge with adjacent ones. I absolutely don't know where we'll end up. I'm confident that stamina and work ethic will matter a lot, but not that these will be employed specifically in a rapid-fire window-juggling mode.
Some people are already living in the future and doing this to varying degrees. I've only begun experimenting in this area and am still doing more copying and pasting between tools than I'd like to admit.↩