- Traditional tools like Vim and Emacs gain trust through deep customization and muscle memory, making them feel like extensions of the developer.
- AI coding agents speed up output but reduce trust; usage rises while trust falls (from 40% to 29% in a recent survey).
- New AI tools require a shift in process and culture, not just tool adoption; a broken process remains broken even with better tools.
- Code becomes cheaper to produce, but validation (code review, infrastructure cost, failure risk) becomes the new bottleneck.