Agentic Coding is Eating Itself | Jonathan Ellis (CEO, Brokk)
Listen to full episode:
Summary: Anant and Ed open with a quick recap of the IBM Think Conference before bringing on Jonathan Ellis, CEO of Brokk and Co-Founder of DataStax, who shares his experience being one of the first developers to get AI-generated code merged into major open-source projects. He walks through what actually worked, where AI-written code kept drifting from spec, and what that friction taught him about how far agentic coding has really come. Jonathan also pushes back on the developer backlash against AI, making the case for why coding skills still matter even as the tools get more capable. His bigger point: coding is turning into something business users need to understand too, not just an engineering problem.
Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction and Insights From IBM Think Conference
02:51 - AI in Coding: Current Trends and Backlash
05:42 - Agentic Coding and Its Implications
08:56 - The Role of AI in Code Review
11:39 - Jonathan Ellis: Background and Contributions
14:41 - Navigating Large Code Bases with AI
17:35 - The Evolution of Coding Practices
20:49 - Future of AI in Coding and Development
31:32 - Navigating AI's Limitations in Code Review
33:39 - The Evolution of AI Tools in Development
36:38 - The Bottleneck Shift: From Coding to Review Processes
39:27 - The Future of Coding: Static Analysis vs. Text Tools
43:36 - The Challenges of Black Box Development
46:33 - Human Oversight in AI-Driven Development
50:19 - Optimizing Team Coordination in Software Projects
Sound Bites:
“AI has made authoring code 10x faster, and it has not made reviewing code 10x faster.”
“We get to invent the state of the art every day.”
“The glass isn’t even half full, it’s 90% full.”
