What Actually Works in Agentic Coding?

Summary

Lucas Meijer discusses how coding agents are changing software development, while emphasizing that the field is moving too quickly for confident predictions. Agents can dramatically speed up some work, but their reliability and the best ways to use them still depend on the task.

Key ideas

• Learning to program: Meijer believes it is easier to learn now because information and AI assistance are readily available. He still sees value in lasting fundamentals, such as understanding how CPUs and memory work, even as popular languages and tools change. He left university because he was learning more through programming work and teaching.
• Agents and programming languages: Agents may make it practical to rewrite existing software in newer languages, lowering the barrier to experimenting with language designs. Meijer says he used an agent to rewrite the Campfire project from Ruby into Jai, a language created by Jonathan Blow. He also describes game programmers’ frustrations with C++, including long compile times from template-heavy code.
• How to work with agents: Meijer alternates between fast, agent-driven development and careful, deliberate coding. He says he would be more cautious with a library, where the code itself is a lasting product, than with an application, where the user experience matters more and the implementation can be changed later.
• Software factories: Meijer describes a software factory as a way to automate repetitive steps in building and maintaining software. At Unity, for example, QA staff handled incoming crash reports by reproducing issues, clarifying reports, and narrowing down which version or change caused them. Agents could assist with those steps.
• Practical automation examples: Meijer asks agents to use his web app as a user, without access to its source code, and report problems. He also sketches a workflow in which agents investigate findings, suggest fixes, test them, and prepare a diff or pull request for human approval. He presents these as straightforward opportunities for automation—not as proof that human review is unnecessary.
• Agents in the Cloud: Meijer’s product is designed to run multiple coding agents in parallel, in separate sandboxes, while keeping them running after the user closes their laptop. He wanted a more convenient and safer alternative to juggling agents locally alongside personal files and secrets. Although the product can run in the cloud, he says many users run it on a machine they own, such as a Mac mini. He sees it primarily as an individual tool for now, while suggesting that shared agent threads could be a later direction.
• Jobs and the value of engineering: Meijer is uncertain whether agents will reliably perform most software work or how jobs will change. He expects software to be built for many smaller, specialized problems that previously were not worth the expense. For engineers, he identifies choosing what to build and helping make it successful—including through product and marketing work—as high-value contributions. He cautions that people who wait for assigned tickets may face more pressure than those who take initiative.
• Other project: Meijer describes Lees Simpel, an app inspired by his girlfriend’s work in government and social services. It scans complicated letters and produces a friendlier, easier-to-understand summary with bullet points and emojis. He says it gained traction and has simplified millions of letters.
• Advice to builders: Meijer recommends learning in this fast-changing field by building and sharing projects. Even experienced programmers are uncertain about what comes next, so newcomers should not assume their ideas or work are not worth showing.

Reviews, guides, or tutorials

No formal product review or step-by-step tutorial is presented. The conversation includes practical examples of agent workflows, including automated bug triage and testing an app from a user’s perspective.

Main speakers and sources

• Lucas Meijer — independent developer and creator of Agents in the Cloud; primary speaker.
• Host/interviewer — host of the West Coast Builders podcast; not named in the subtitles.