Max Headroom 
UNCLASSIFIED
| The following originally appears on fast.ai and is reposted here with the author’s permission. |
I’ve spent decades teaching people to code, building tools that help developers work more effectively, and championing the idea that programming should be accessible to everyone. Through fast.ai, I’ve helped millions learn not just to use AI but to understand it deeply enough to build things that matter.
But lately, I’ve been deeply concerned. The AI agent revolution promises to make everyone more productive, yet what I’m seeing is something different: developers abandoning the very practices that lead to understanding, mastery, and software that lasts. When CEOs brag about their teams generating 10,000 lines of AI-written code per day, when junior engineers tell me they’re “vibe-coding” their way through problems without understanding the solutions, are we racing toward a future where no one understands how anything works, and competence craters?
I needed to talk to someone who embodies the opposite approach: someone whose code continues to run the world decades after he created it. That’s why I called Chris Lattner, cofounder and CEO of Modular AI and creator of LLVM, the Clang compiler, the Swift programming language, and the MLIR compiler infrastructure.
Chris and I chatted on Oct 5, 2025, and he kindly let me record the conversation. I’m glad I did, because it turned out to be thoughtful and inspiring. Check out the video for the full interview.
Read Jeremy’s full thoughts about the episode in his post on fast.ai‘s blog.
AI & ML, Commentary
Radar
