Coding Agents and the Future of Software Development

Wondering why your maker-turned-manager suddenly seems distracted in meetings? Maybe they're addicted to coding agents! In this episode of Lightcone, @calvinfo — a co-founder of Segment and former engineer on OpenAI's Codex team — joins us to talk about why coding agents suddenly feel so powerful, the differences between Codex, Claude Code, and Cursor, and what the future of work will look like. 0:00 Intro 1:15 Garry can’t stop using Claude Code! 4:00 Contrast with IDE’s, context-splitting 6:23 Distribution models, top down vs bottom up 9:11 Licensing and optimization 12:28 Tips on becoming a top 1% user of coding agents 17:36 When can the agents work 24-48 hour running jobs on their own? 21:34 Can the agent teach things like architecture? 26:27 Will the next generation have even better taste and multitasking ability? 29:58 Maker vs manager schedules 31:36 How would Calvin build Segment now? 35:52 The importance of testing 38:52 The Claude bots are talking (to each other!) 40:10 Examples of complex issues, how will the tools evolve 43:00 Outro