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Humans are terrible programmers [2026w20]
from Lead Prompt Podcast Hosted by John Collins
We panic about AI writing bad code, but are human programmers actually any better? In this episode of Lead Prompt, I draw on over twenty years of software engineering experience to expose an uncomfortable truth: humans are objectively terrible at programming. Beyond the weekly headaches of deployment regressions and the false security of human-written unit tests, I break down five of the most catastrophic software failures in history, including the tragic Therac-25 accidents, the Ariane 5 rocket explosion, and Knight Capital's $440 million glitch. Tune in to explore why placing blind faith in human developers has historically been a recipe for disaster, and why our industry's fear of artificial intelligence might be completely misplaced. Show notes are here: https://leadprompt.sh/a/742-Humans-are-terrible-programmers-2026w20 Keywords: Lead Prompt, John Collins, leadprompt.sh, Tech Leader Pro, software engineering, programming, software bugs, coding, tech history, AI vs humans, software development, tech leadership, software regressions, unit testing, worst software failures, Therac-25, Ariane 5, Mars Climate Orbiter, Knight Capital glitch, Patriot missile failure, software architecture, technical debt, artificial intelligence, AI programming
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