Is Andrej Karpathy wrong about agentic coding?
A recent clip from his interview with Dwarkesh Patel has been doing the rounds. In it, he calls current coding agents “not net useful” for his nanochat repo – and a lot of people have since quietly updated their beliefs about what’s possible.
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Is Andrej Karpathy wrong about agentic coding? 👇
A recent clip from his interview with Dwarkesh Patel has been doing the rounds. In it, he calls current coding agents “not net useful” for his nanochat repo – and a lot of people have since quietly updated their beliefs about what’s possible.
I think that’s the wrong generalisation.
In this long-form piece, I unpack:
- the very peculiar context he’s speaking from (nanochat + his craft),
- why vibe coding and serious AI Engineering are not the same thing,
- Human + Agent Fleet vs Spec + Agent Swarm
- What this all means for real teams trying to ship software with agents today.
Karpathy is right about his own context. He’s incomplete as a spokesperson for the whole industry.
Please, share your thoughts: how are you actually using (or avoiding) agentic coding in your team today?