The Next Evolutionary Step – Annie Vella
May 12, 2025
The recent releases of Claude Code and OpenAI Codex caught my attention, but not for the reasons you might expect. I was puzzled by the enthusiasm they’ve generated. These are, after all, terminal tools. In an era where graphical IDEs dominate, with tools like Cursor, Windsurf, and VSCode evolving toward ever-more seamless integrations, like ‘Design Mode’, why are we getting excited about terminal-based AI coding tools that feel like a step backwards?
Annie Vella has been writing very thoughtfully about the impact of AI on Software Engineering and her most recent piece focusses on recent CLI tools, like Claude Code and OpenAI Codex. Where she ends up is perhaps not where she started.
As novelist Neal Stephenson wrote a long time ago “In the beginning was the command line“. Perhaps in the end there will be as well?
