Thomas Ptacek
Security engineer; founder of Matasano Security and Latacora.
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2 Jun 2025
Even if all progress on LLMs stopped today, LLMs would remain the second most important development in a software career spanning the mid-1990s to now.All progress on LLMs could halt today, and LLMs would remain the 2nd most important thing to happen over the course of my career.
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2 Jun 2025
LLMs can write a large fraction of the tedious code a developer will ever need to write, and most code on most projects is tedious.LLMs can write a large fraction of all the tedious code you’ll ever need to write. And most code on most projects is tedious. LLMs drastically reduce the number of things you’ll ever need to Google.
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2 Jun 2025
The part of a coding agent that actually acts on code is not AI at all — it is simple systems code wired to ground truth, the way a Makefile is.The code in an agent that actually “does stuff” with code is not, itself, AI. This should reassure you. It’s surprisingly simple systems code, wired to ground truth about programming in the same way a Makefile is.