What the big names say about LLMs

I decided to find out what the big names in our industry (or, to make it sound grand, Computer Science) have to say about developing with LLMs. As expected, there's no consensus:

Against

Rich Hickey (creator of Clojure): "LLMs are not tools. LLMs are automation".

James Gosling (creator of Java): "I've used LLMs a lot for programming, but I've never been happy with the code they produced".

Bjarne Stroustrup (creator of C++): "Right now, it's a poor fit for safety-critical and performance-critical code".

Anders Hejlsberg (creator of Turbo Pascal, C#, and TypeScript): "I couldn't sleep at night if I didn't understand what I was vouching for". Opposes handing over full control.

Daniel Stenberg (creator of curl): "We do not hand over our responsibility to any machines". Opposes development without human review and approval.

Guido van Rossum (creator of Python): "I'm definitely not looking forward to an AI-driven future". On AI in general, October 2025.

In favor

David Heinemeier Hansson (creator of Ruby on Rails): "We will no longer write the vast majority of code by hand".

Salvatore Sanfilippo (creator of Redis): "Control the ideas, not the code".

John Carmack (co-creator of Doom and Quake): "AI makes many programming skills far less critical".

Yukihiro Matsumoto (creator of Ruby): "I think there will be fewer jobs that consist solely of writing code".

Linus Torvalds (creator of Linux and Git): "AI tools are great, but only if they actually help".

Martin Fowler (author of Refactoring, co-author of the Agile Manifesto): "Humans are still responsible for what the software does and how it's designed". Supports development with agents under engineering supervision.

Kent Beck (creator of XP, TDD pioneer): "My work has changed, but my strategic decisions are more valuable than ever".

Robert Martin (author of Clean Code): "TDD is a human discipline. I don't expect agents to follow it".

Grady Booch (one of the creators of UML): "Your tools change, but your problems remain".

Donald Knuth (author of The Art of Computer Programming): "It looks like I'll have to revise my views on generative AI". A positive response to a specific research result.

Final score: 6:10 in favor of the supporters. A more modest result than I expected. Looking at yet another architecture dreamed up by GPT 6.1-Sol, I also feel it's too early to write off the meatbags.