Should AI Engineers Still Read Code in 2026? The Z/L Continuum — Alex Volkov, ThursdAI

Summary

The main theme is the shift in AI engineering away from manual coding towards supervising AI agents, driven by significant advancements in AI capability around December 2025 as evidenced by wtfhappened2025.com. Key subjects include AI-generated code, the "Token Maxing" concept, and the example of Boris from Anthropic whose code is largely AI-authored. The practical takeaway is that AI engineers now "supervise agents" and "move up the layer" rather than handcrafting code, as the cost of code production has decreased while human attention remains valuable.