When Karpathy feels behind
Dec 27, 2025
If even Karpathy says he feels like he is falling behind as a programmer, that is a good indicator of the times.
The profession is being rebuilt. We no longer just write code; we try to wire together a pile of stochastic, semi-transparent systems: agents, prompts, contexts, tools, integrations. The new layer appeared very quickly, and nobody has a proper mental model of it yet.
The feeling of “I could be doing several times more if I just wired all of this up properly” seems to be universal right now. It is not about intelligence, it is about the speed of change.
https://x.com/karpathy/status/2004607146781278521
Originally posted in Russian on my telegram. This is a translation.