I feel that two things are true at the same time:

1) Something happened during 2025 that made the models (or crucially, the wrapping terminal-based apps like Claude Code or Codex) much better. I only type in the terminal anymore.

2) The quality of the code is still quite often terrible. Quadruple-nested control flow abounds. Software architecture in rather small scopes is unsound. People say AI is “good at front end” but I see the worst kind of atrocities there (a few days ago Codex 5.3 tried to inject a massive HTML element with a CSS before hack, rather than proprerly refactoring markup)

Two forces feel true simultaneously but in permanent tension. I still cannot make out my mind and see the synthesis in the dialectic, where this is truly going, if we’re meaningfully moving forward or mostly moving in circles.