I keep hearing programmers say they no longer read the code they ship.

Same. But I'd note that for decades I have been reading other people's code because they didn't. The new thing is that there is no more LGTM either, which meant "I glanced this over, let's go!"

How do you keep improving if you don't read code?

You don't. But you no longer need to improve because you're mostly typing in the chat box, not the editor. You just bitch at Anthropic for Claude being a dumbass.

How do you keep your system sustainable?

By throwing more GPU time at it.

I've been thinking about what is needed on the systems consumer side if this persists (likely, I think!), and to me it seems that the real challenge will be in adapting architecture and interfacing. Because of the decrease in attention to detail on the vendor side (which in the median has already been awful in the last 2+ decades) not being vendor-locked now becomes essential. As we observe the increase of did-not-read merging, on the consumer side I hear: "we want to get rid of <x>, but this will take forever because our entire process depends on it".

Perhaps, having a staff coder in-house will become a necessity again, like in the 80s/90s, but now maybe more of a staff systems architect? Getting your overall framework balanced between interface rigidity and implementation flexibility is becoming a key (critical?) success factor.