While trying to capture that bug, I (ironically) asked Gemini (but the Gemini-via-Google-search Gemini, since Gemini proper was an outage) for the package name of a screen recorder (gtkRecordMyDesktop); the command it returned referenced a non-existent package¹. I then found an alternative, and then hit a bug in that screen recording software that I had to then work around to get the video file there.
The site I uploaded the video to, Imgur, breaks completely — i.e., it cannot even so much as surface an error message — if your browser refuses to let it store god knows what on your disks. (So as it is, I have an extension that says "why yes, of course you can have storage, and essentially provides a black hole. But since it looks like a "success" to the Javascript, the JS doesn't crash!)
This isn't, to me, some one-off interaction. Every interaction with software these days feels like this, more and more. Just breakages everywhere that leaves me wondering if "coding is solved", where is all the bug free software?
(¹forcefully prompting the AI to actually query the package listing netted me a classic "You're absolutely right! The package name I referenced does not exist!")
My experience is the same as yours. Every single service I use. Apps, websites, doesn't matter what. Every single one seems just softly degraded. Like I can't trust that features work any more. I could report the bug, but what's the point? It's going to go to some Claude triage agent who is going to "fix" it by slopping up the app even more. Do people even use their own websites and apps any more? Apparently not - the same people declaring software solved are having their AI agents doing computer use and going on these websites for them!
Claude, please read the Bible for me. Tell me what I need to do to get into Heaven. Oh, can you dictate it to me? I'm managing an agent swarm.
Bleh.
The comments to this article suggest that it's still disputed.
Personally, I think it's a bit of a silly phrase, because it implies an absolute, and all anyone needs to do to disprove it is to show that coding was not solved for problem X. That's still the case -- it's just that the set of X is rapidly shrinking.
I think it's more indicative to say how much you trust LLM code. A little over a year ago, I scrutinised every line carefully, and it was buggy as hell and I had to fix most generated code by hand. Now, models write clean code with fewer bugs (far fewer) than I would. A year ago, I was doing a lot of steering during planning; now, it's rare that I don't agree with the model's first proposed solution, and even if I don't, it's most likely to fix a minor change in understanding, not to propose a substantial architectural change as it was before.
The one thing I'm not sure about is how much this is due to better prompting on my part. I doubt that this contributes much, but I still suspect that continual usage does make you more aware of what works and what does not: how much detail to provide, how to describe a problem or change, how to propose solutions while still leaving other options open.
LLMs still mess up a lot if you just let them loose and don't guide what they do.
We're in our own bubbles where a good part of HN population woke up to coding agents being good enough ~1 year ago, there's a group of folks that found out ~6 months before that, and then the people banging their heads on these a bit earlier than that. If you aren't using a coding agent everyday most people are just using these things to apply an instagram filter, or sort a grocery list. Muse is probably the closest thing to 'full automation' a lot of people are seeing for the first time.
Unfortunately I don't think the bubble that exists at the moment is on the promise of automating so much coding as trying to penetrate consumer use cases, which I think are still lacking and not reliable enough yet. As much as I use coding agents every day I still will not let a claw-like near a bank account or a credit card.