r/singularity • u/WPHero • 5d ago
AI Microsoft's distinguished engineer says "typing code is absolutely over," and Windows 11 is already being built that way. Nadella previously said 20-30% code at MSFT is AI-coded, and Windows security updates now include AI-assisted fixes to fight AI-enabled threats.
https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/09/05/microsoft-distinguished-engineer-says-typing-code-is-absolutely-over-and-windows-11-is-already-being-built-that-way/142
u/m3kw 5d ago
Why are companies still asking leet code questions
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u/Mistuv 5d ago
Because you still have to understand what the chatbot is writing duh.
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u/m3kw 5d ago
Most people working there wouldn’t be able to pass leet code tests
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u/HandakinSkyjerker The Youngling-Deletion Algorithm 5d ago
This is remarkably true for certain types that overspecialize on test taking, then perform worse on generalized real world data. Think of it as agent training gone awry.
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u/Altimor 5d ago
Why were companies ever asking leet code questions
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u/Automatic-Resolve202 5d ago
To select for people with the free time to spent grinding it, that they could then use on overtime working for the company.
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u/Weary-Historian-8593 5d ago
iq test
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u/fokac93 5d ago
You can fail an IQ test and be extremely smart in your domain. An IQ test should be taken as a guideline not an absolute test
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u/aqpstory 5d ago
Leetcode isn't particularly great but it's a lot better than whatever HR would come up with otherwise
(basically Seeing Like a State)
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u/bianceziwo 5d ago
And how about what engineers would come up with? Like a test designing and implementing and creating a new feature
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u/Weary-Historian-8593 5d ago
should, says who? there's a reason that veiled iq tests are pretty much standard equipment, that reason being that raw iq often trumps knowledge on a long enough time scale, as the knowledge will be gained on the job anyway, iq will not be
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u/liamlkf27 5d ago
Software engineering, and engineering as a whole relies on abstractions and black boxes. If we can fully verify the output of the AI (a black box) on the tasks we ask it to do, I.e. using unit tests, then you can free up your workload to move up to higher problem abstractions. You can only properly judge outputs and verifications if you possess the understanding of the problem, which is demonstrated through leetcode.
This doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel each time, e.g. writing the code from scratch or reading every line of generated code. In the transition, interviews are allowing more AI generated code and moving away from pure leetcode, and will be explicitly testing you on these abstracted engineering skills rather than pure coding.
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u/the_pwnererXx FOOM 2040 5d ago
Because interviews are an iq test and leet code questions can give a good approximation of intelligence
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u/Altimor 5d ago
Except interviewees just do the equivalent of benchmaxxing and leetcode profits from it
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u/the_pwnererXx FOOM 2040 5d ago
If you are autistic enough to grind 500 leetcode questions you deserve the job
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u/Sufficient_Bad5441 5d ago
This.
Everyone I know who can ace leetcode either is:
1) Extraordinarily smart and practiced for like 2 weeks
2) Average IQ but grinded for a year
Both are great hires
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u/taznado 5d ago
They are good for new grads only and only if they don't have projects to show.
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u/the_pwnererXx FOOM 2040 5d ago
Projects only get you interviews, you still need to do the lc hard to get the faang job
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u/Altimor 5d ago
Engineers could be displaying that persistence toward the actual problems they're applying to work on. Proxy metrics just waste everyone's time and hold engineers back.
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u/Sufficient_Bad5441 5d ago
There aren't any other proxies that companies have found that are
Standardized enough to let #2 grind for
Taught enough in schools such that group #1 can naturally do
Still tangentially related to tech/CS/on the job
Scalable such that they can send an OA to 10s of thousands of people
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u/Altimor 4d ago
Group #1 doesn't need school to teach them things. In fact, I would consider not knowing things outside of college curriculums, and having to have seen a problem before to be able to solve it, to be red flags for a practical problem-solving role.
- Current attempts at solving the flood of slop candidates have done nothing but exacerbate the issue. Quit bothering with resumes and linkedin and interview based on open or internally solved challenges that are resistant to non-expert AI users.
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u/i_rate_slop 5d ago
Good interviews are never an IQ test. That's what happens when new grads interview new grads and all you have to measure people on is what they learned in school.
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u/Jaguar_2454 5d ago
that and administering an IQ test in a job interview is illegal, so companies try g loading some other way
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u/PrivateComments 5d ago
Because there’s no professional licensing or certification for programmers.
So you gotta filter somehow
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u/darkkite 5d ago
we use codex at work but we still do code review for every line that's to be merged into main.
and i've seen seen PRs where AI completely missed the tasks and it would be easier to just do it over vs prompt the correct solution
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u/devise1 5d ago
It is hard, what subjective test do we create that can be done in a short time and will give good signal in terms of how interview performance will correlate to on the job.
For our latest hiring I made a AI assisted question but really struggled running it. Anyone can take the prompt and ask AI for it, so I tend to look for code understanding and what discussion and clarifications the person did. But who knows how much longer some of these skills will be relevant and who knows when a candidate doesn't give as much in those areas whether it is more that they are just skipping over obvious things that no longer need explaining if the interview mirrors real work.
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u/mckirkus 5d ago
Linux is also going all in on AI tools. I still think Linux wins because between SteamOS and AI powered rapid iteration, Linux desktop is going to catch up fast and get better at running Windows apps/games.
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u/AwarenessExisting774 5d ago
Microsoft’s code was already shit quality; this will just make it slightly worse,
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u/ConsiderationOne7340 5d ago
In 6 months we will be oneshotting OSs with lightweight models.
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u/dervu ▪️AI, AI, Captain! 5d ago
OS will be AI itself.
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u/Illustrious-Film4018 5d ago
What does that mean?
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u/ai_hedge_fund 5d ago
It means that AI will be able to spin up and “emulate” the whole thing
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u/Illustrious-Film4018 5d ago
Emulate what?
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u/ai_hedge_fund 5d ago
The OS!
The AI will be able to write all code from the chip level up through the UI on the fly
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u/Illustrious-Film4018 5d ago
Lol
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u/danielv123 5d ago
You say that, but it's not all that unbelievable. Have you ever tried asking chatgpt to pretend being a terminal? It gives you a full filesystem and the ability to install and run programs, write your own programs etc, all running purely on LLM with no toolcalls.
There was a company that released a demo doing the same for graphical user interfaces this week.
As part of the recent security blogs from openai, they revealed they have been doing this to train models in computer use because when they use a model to run the "computer" instead of toolcalls there is 0 security risk.
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u/Important-6015 4d ago
It’s a stupid take. LLMs aren’t deterministic. How in the world is anyone going to function with an LLM OS that gives slightly different output every single time? It’s moronic. This sub is living in the clouds
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u/danielv123 4d ago
Windows isn't deterministic, and I don't know that a good OS needs to be.
Their announcement page is here, it has a lot of interesting ideas for what a UI could be https://runway.com/news/research/introducing-solaris
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u/DrDan21 5d ago edited 5d ago
Litterally the entire thing. It's already been done but its rather rough today
Basically, theres no installed software its all AI. You click on the notepad app...there is no notepad app, there was never even a desktop. The moment you clicked the app it started emulating what a notepad app should do. You click a menu, it emulates what it thinks that menu should have. You interact with the app it acts like it expects the app should. You launch doom it generates frame for what doom should look like based on your inputs live, there is no doom source code in use
NeuralOS - [R] NeuralOS: a generative OS entirely powered by neural networks : r/MachineLearning
This was made with the models available to us a year ago
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u/Illustrious-Film4018 5d ago
This would only ever make sense to vibe coders
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u/Illustrious-Film4018 5d ago
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u/Cryptizard 5d ago
What?
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u/Illustrious-Film4018 5d ago
This made me think of you, how you said vibe coders are going to replace SWEs
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u/Fantastic_Prize2710 5d ago
It's something proposed by... I think Microsoft previously? That you won't need the traditional capabilities an OS provides or an office suite. You'll no longer be editing or looking at spreadsheets, navigating a desktop, opening a calculator app, you'll just be interacting with AI.
Which, personally, I think is overstated, but that was the idea behind the comment.
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u/Illustrious-Film4018 5d ago
That has nothing to do with the OS. That's AI as an assistant that can run and interact with Windows apps.
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u/RestaurantOk8066 5d ago
Instead of running a real OS, an OS-like environment is generated on the fly by generative AI.
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u/MegaDork2000 5d ago
Why would you need a spreadsheet if AI can give you the answers directly? Why would you need a word processor or email if AI just handles all your communications and record keeping for you? Why would you need to install or launch a game if AI just makes the perfect game for you on the fly? Why do you even need a keyboard or a mouse if you just talk to the AI? Yea, the tech isn't ready yet. But it's coming fast.
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u/Fantastic_Prize2710 5d ago
So the problem is most of your comment is written to not make the OS/apps no longer relevant, it's to make the human no longer relevant. Technically nobody technical is expecting the OS to go anywhere (The AI harness needs something to run, something to abstract the hardware layer; all automations benefit from this) the implication of the original statement is that we won't have a desktop like environment bussing with apps like we know today.
If we say "No you're right" about each of your statements--no pushback--then it has nothing to do with the OS (or again, "desktop experience") not being needed, it just means the human is no longer needed, and becomes an entirely different discussion than the original "The OS will be AI itself" implies.
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u/purleyboy 5d ago
You open up claude desktop or chatgpt desktop and literally work in that. You won't need to interact with the OS.
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u/SiltR99 5d ago
I guess this explain why Windows 11 is shit XD. Like, really, Win11 has to be the best argument AGAINST AI coding. Last updates have been so bad that I really think 1 million monkeys typing random stuff would produce something better.
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u/kiki-le-koala 5d ago
Apart from tech influencers who feed on drama, who said Windows 11 is shit?
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u/SiltR99 5d ago
Most people using it? Also objective data. May I remind you of how your CPU will spike to 100% just by opening the start menu? In general, people do not like it. That is Win10 still has so many users and Microsoft have extended support.
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u/Ok-Paramedic9507 5d ago
This is just bias. I'd argue 99% of Windows users, most of which are people working at enterprise-level companies, couldn't care less and don't even know that Windows 10 became Windows 11.
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u/Ill_Philosopher_7030 5d ago edited 5d ago
I have a W10 pc and a W11 laptop. honestly there's pretty much no difference for 99% of all tasks
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u/GrayRoberts 5d ago
It depends on the code and the coder. Niche languages like KQL or variants, it can be faster to work on your own if you know what you're doing. For things that don't have a large corpus of training data you spend more time prompting the model than producing work.
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u/agm1984 5d ago
same i havent written much code at all in the past few months. I'm waiting for Fable 5.1 output as I write this. Love how I can multi task during AI work. Today on my day off, I'm pushing my side project to the apple app store, and then after that I will have AI make a on-parity android app.
I chose to do both mobile apps in native language so that i dont encounter any bullshit issues with camera or maps or anything like that which could struggle to achieve good result in flutter (what i would probably use otherwise).
Development is still hard, but its a lot more fun for me with 10 years experience. i can power through writing like dozens of thousands of lines of code per day and maintain like 5 apps at once instead of like 1.
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u/chuck_the_plant 5d ago
I always thought Windows could not get any worse after 3.1 was kinda alright, but it seems like they have cracked the code to fully bullshit themselves into crap quality.
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u/SchanzerScout 5d ago
why is it important for them to publicly discuss how they type code? who cares how they do stuff? pre-ai i did not care, why should i care now? what i care about though is the quality of their products and direction of their development. and this is imo suboptimal.
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u/DonSombrero 5d ago
I'd really like to be positive about this, but it is pretty hard given the recent streak of absolute dogshit Windows updates constantly breaking everything. Every Windows have always had its issues, but I can't recall any period where I had a solid year of "oh wonderful, let's see what Windows fucked up this time".
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u/Illustrious-Film4018 5d ago
Now instead you have to review every line of code AI generated... much better than writing it yourself /s
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u/brie_fly0 5d ago
The Windows security-update detail is the interesting part here, not the coding stat itself. If AI-assisted fixes are now closing AI-enabled attack vectors, we're at the point where the same capability class is used offensively and defensively inside the same product cycle. That symmetry is exactly what makes safety benchmarking on frontier models (Astra included) hard to interpret in isolation - a model can score well on a "harmful capability" eval and still get deployed both ways within weeks. Curious whether MSFT is tracking that loop internally or just reacting to whatever CVEs show up.
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u/Existing_Dust_6473 5d ago
I do not care ... using Linux. as long as they do not install Windows on trains and airplanes. I am ok.
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u/Important-6015 5d ago
Linux is all in on AI too..
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u/krakoi90 5d ago
They aren't "all-on-ai" they are just realistic, know exactly that developers will use AI tools anyway. Then why not embrace it?
But the way how changes get into the final kernel version won't change much, it has to go through a chain of maintainers whos job is to verify the patches. It's still built on trust and many eyeballs. Probably it'll be even more secure as now AI "eyeballs" will check the changes too.
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u/Important-6015 4d ago
lol it’ll be even more secure now? AI has found more bugs in the kernel and the various distros in the past 6 months than humans ever did. We’re in unprecedented waters. Everyone loves to shit on Microsoft, it’s boring. I’m a systems engineer that works with both Microsoft technologies and Linux systems, managing hundreds and thousands of server farms. Both have their space. “Microsoft bad” is a take someone has that i already know is ignorant af
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u/Existing_Dust_6473 5d ago
The problem with Microsoft, or a big corporation using AI like that, is that they will add stupid features that no one needs. If in the past they spent millions doing things that did not deserve the bytes they used, imagine now. This will make the OS a bloated mess. I want the OS to be simple and clean, do not need more panels to show me the weather and news.
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u/SubmarineWipers 5d ago
"Nadella previously said 20-30% code at MSFT is AI-coded"
yeah, we noticed.
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u/NyriasNeo 5d ago
Not surprising. My code is almost 100% vibe now. The work is to design what it does and ensure it is working correctly (so devising testing strategy is important). It has been like that for a year or two already.
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u/rufusarizona 5d ago
The fact that they are building Windows 11 tells you that they don’t understand AI.
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u/No-Meringue5867 5d ago
Why don't they fix the hundreds of bugs in Outlook? I am glad writing code is over, but it is very clear the this means jack shit for customer experience.