Spotify CEO Says Top Developers Haven't Written Code Since December

Amid repeated warnings by top experts that coding may become obsolete with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, Spotify co-CEO Gustav Soderstrom has claimed that his best developers have not 'written a single line of code since December'. Soderstrom's statement comes at a time when Spotify has recently rolled out features like AI-powered Prompted Playlists, Page Match for audiobooks, and About This Song.

Engineers at Spotify are using an internal system called 'Honk' to speed up coding and product velocity, according to a report in TechCrunch.

"As a concrete example, an engineer at Spotify on their morning commute from Slack on their cell phone can tell Claude to fix a bug or add a new feature to the iOS app," Soderstrom said.

"And once Claude finishes that work, the engineer then gets a new version of the app, pushed to them on Slack on their phone, so that he can then merge it to production, all before they even arrive at the office."

Honk not only writes code but also helps fix bugs at Spotify, stating that the system has helped with deployment tremendously.

"We foresee this not being the end of the line in terms of AI development, just the beginning," Soderstrom said.

As per Spotify, instead of writing repetitive code, its developers are now reviewing AI-generated code and focusing more on architecture and product decisions.

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'Don't Bother Coding'

Recently, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said coding as a profession could largely cease to exist by the end of 2026 as AI systems become capable of generating machine-level code without human-written programming languages.

"I think...by the end of this year you don't even bother doing coding. The AI will just create the binary directly. And the AI can create a much more efficient binary than can be done by any compiler."

Similarly, Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu warned that those writing code, including him, should consider alternative livelihoods.

"At this point, it is best for those of us who depend on writing code for a living to start considering alternative livelihoods. I include myself in this. I don't say this in panic, but with calm acceptance and embrace," said Vembu.