Karpathy on Programming: "I've never felt this much behind"

Andrej Karpathy just told the internet he’s never felt so behind, saying programming has morphed into wrangling chatty “agents,” plugin mazes, and permission pop-ups instead of writing code. He calls it an alien tool with no manual, and the community heard the siren and sprinted to the comments. One camp is pure anxiety: “the joy of solving hard problems” is being bulldozed by AI speed, with one commenter picturing a tsunami they might not outrun. Another camp shrugs and says, relax—these tools are powerful but messy, like slot machines: you ask, fiddle, retry, and hope the output sticks. Skeptics hammered the randomness, arguing it’s hard to build anything when the machine might change its mind tomorrow. The spiciest subplot? A jab that Karpathy tiptoes around Elon Musk—cue conspiracy hats—and that interviewers won’t poke the bear. Meanwhile, the meme lords went feral: “agents and subagents” got compared to a Marvel lineup, and “roll up your sleeves” became “roll the dice.” People joked that coding has turned into summoning spirits: “Stack Overflow is now a séance.” Whether it’s a power-up or a chaos engine, the vibe is split: awe, dread, and a whole lot of “is it me, or is this thing drunk?”