Boris Cherny: Programming will shift from text manipulation to working with agents
Boris Cherny · Anthropic's Surprise Hit: How Claude Code Became an AI Coding Powerhouse · Aug 7, 2025 · at 56:57
Boris Cherny, creator of Claude Code at Anthropic, discusses the long-term evolution of software engineering in the era of AI.
0:00 / 0:10exact quote · 10.3s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I think one way it will definitely play out is it's going to change programming where programming is no longer direct text manipulation, but it's more working with agents to get the work done.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Boris Cherny
Cherny: Anthropic builds minimal product interfaces to keep up with model evolution
“The way we think about it is the model is evolving so quickly that we build a minimal possible product to keep up with it.”
Cherny: Code is the primary path for AI to reach AGI
“Maybe coding is the way that we get to the next level of intelligence. If you call it like AGI or ASI or whatever, the model needs some way to interact with the world and for a model, the natural way is code.”
Cherny: AI models won't need rigid sub-agent roles in 6-12 months
“But I think that the models six or 12 months from now, they probably won't need this anymore because they're all going to be pretty good and you won't have to define very rigidly what each one's responsibilities are anymore.”
Cherny: Claude Code does not use RAG for codebase memory
“And so quad code actually doesn't use this technique called rag. Instead, what it does is it just searches files the same way that a human would.”
Cherny rates Claude Code 10/10 for codebase research, 6/10 for writing
“I feel like if you look at answering questions about the code base and kind of code base research, I think it's like 10 out of 10 good. It's as good as it can get. When it comes to writing code, it's maybe like a six out of 10. It's pretty good. It won't get e…”