本文采访了“敏捷宣言”的作者之一Kent Beck，探讨了AI在编程领域的影响。Beck认为，AI工具虽然提高了效率，但其不可预测性也带来挑战，如同“精灵”许愿。他强调，随着AI的发展，项目组织能力等通用技能将比特定技术专长更有价值。Beck分享了他使用AI工具的经验，并指出AI编程的随机性如同赌博，但也可能带来“魔法”般的惊喜。文章强调了在AI时代，保持开放心态，不断尝试的重要性。

🔮Kent Beck将AI工具比作“精灵”，它们虽然能满足愿望，但结果往往难以预测，甚至可能与期望大相径庭。

💡Beck认为，随着AI在编程领域的应用，项目组织、制定目标、控制复杂性等技能将变得比具体的技术专长更重要。

🎲Beck分享了他使用AI编程的体验，认为结果的随机性类似赌博，虽然可能带来负面结果，但偶尔也会出现“魔法”般的惊喜，令人上瘾。

🚀Beck鼓励人们积极尝试各种AI工具，因为目前没有人能确定哪种方法最有效。他认为，通过不断实践，真理将会浮现。

One of the authors of the "Agile Manifesto" said that working with AI agents can feel like making genie wishes.The output is frequently unpredictable but can sometimes feel like "magic," Kent Beck said in a podcast interview.As AI tools improve, Beck predicts some niche technical skills will be less valuable than a good grasp of organizing projects.

AI agents are like "genies," said Kent Beck, one of the authors of the seminal "Agile Manifesto" — they'll often grant your wish, but not always in the way you'd like them to.

"They will not do what you mean. They have their own agenda," Beck said on a recent episode of The Pragmatic Engineer podcast. "And the best analogy I could find is a genie. It grants you wishes, and then you wish for something, and then you get it, but it's not what you actually wanted."

After 50 years in programming, including a stint at Facebook and a hand in the foundational text about agile software development, Beck said he's now having the most fun of his entire career — and it's partly thanks to AI agents, even despite their unpredictability.

"I'm trying all of the tools," he said. "Because right now, nobody knows what process is going to work best. Nobody knows anything. We should all be trying all the things that we can imagine, and then the truth will emerge out of all of that. So that's what I'm doing."

Beck was one of the 17 authors of the 2001 paper the "Agile Manifesto," which outlines four values and 12 principles for faster software development. The paper inspired the "agile method" of software development, which became commonplace in Silicon Valley because of its efficiency-boosting techniques.

Today, AI is already being used to replace human labor, particularly in programming, where it's hitting early-career engineers the hardest while simultaneously speeding up software development. Given the current state of coding, Beck believes that fundamental organizational skills are increasingly important rather than particular technical specializations.

"So, having a vision, being able to set milestones towards that vision, keeping track of a design to maintain the levels or control the levels of complexity as you go forward," Beck said. "Those are hugely leveraged skills now, compared to, 'I know where to put the ampersands, and the stars, and the brackets in Rust.'"

Though Beck does incorporate AI into his process, he doesn't necessarily trust it, he said. The technology isn't consistent enough to be relied upon.

"Sometimes it even seems like the agent kind of has it in for you," he said. "'If you're going to make me do all this work, I'm just going to delete all your tests and pretend I'm finished, ha, ha, ha.'"

Results are so inconsistent, he added, that using AI to code can sometimes feel like gambling.

"It feels like a rat and the pellet," he said. "It's like there's just a run button and I have to click it every time. And I click it and it is a dopamine rush because this is exactly like a slot machine. You've got intermittent reinforcement, you've got negative outcomes and positive outcomes."

Once in a while, though, the output will be just right — and Beck will be tempted to spin the wheel all over again.

"The distribution is fairly random, seemingly. So it's literally an addictive loop to have it. You say, 'Go do this thing.' And then sometimes it's just magic."