David fowler, an 18-year microsoft distinguished engineer, declared on x that the hand-written-code…
david fowler, an 18-year microsoft distinguished engineer, declared on x that the hand-written-code era is over — and the same week anthropic shipped fable 5.1 only behind a vetted-access gate, openai rated gpt-6 astra "critical" for cybersecurity, and google cut flash pricing 13x. the bottleneck is no longer the model, it is who is allowed to touch it.
how many of the agents shipping to prod today are running on a config your security team hasn't even been shown yet?
Context
HotHardware embeds a post by @davidfowl dated 3 September 2026 saying typing code is absolutely over, and describes him as a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer. Windows Latest, dated 5 September 2026, says a Distinguished Engineer who has worked at Microsoft for 18 years said so. Anthropic's page on Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1 says Fable 5.1 is generally available and that Mythos 5.1, the same model with different safeguards, is limited to trusted access programs. OpenAI's system card calls Astra its first model to reach the Critical level of cybersecurity capability under its Preparedness Framework. Google's docs list Gemini 3.8 Flash at an introductory price of 0.75 and 3.75 dollars per million tokens through 31 December 2026, then 1.50 and 7.50.
The post is supported only through outlet embeds, since the original post on X was not fetched. The note paraphrases it as the hand-written-code era being over, while the post says typing code is absolutely over. The claim that Fable 5.1 shipped only behind a vetted-access gate is contradicted by Anthropic's text: the gate applies to Mythos 5.1, not Fable 5.1. First for the Critical level means first for OpenAI under its own scale. The 13x on Flash is derived against Astra's input price, not a cut from Flash's own earlier price, so cut is unverified.
Related work
- Microsoft engineer declares era of typing code is absolutely over (HotHardware) ↗Embeds the 3 Sep 2026 post.
- Gemini API latest model docs (Google AI for Developers) ↗Introductory pricing.
Watch next
- The original post on X.
Sources
- Microsoft Distinguished Engineer says typing code is absolutely over (Windows Latest, 5 Sep 2026)windowslatest.com
- Claude Fable and Mythos 5.1 (Anthropic)anthropic.com
- GPT-6 Astra system card (OpenAI)deploymentsafety.openai.com
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 6 September 2026 at 20:03 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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