# AI-Assisted Programming and Shared Understanding in Software Projects

DevFeed: [AI-Assisted Programming and Shared Understanding in Software Projects](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-tower-keeps-rising-30729.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/7/13/the-tower-keeps-rising/>)

Author: Armin Ronacher

Published: 2026-07-13T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Armin Ronacher](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/armin-ronacher.md>)

Topics: [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>), [engineering-culture](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/engineering-culture.md>), [Documentation](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/documentation.md>), [Code review](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code-review.md>)

Tags: [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [ai-assisted-programming](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai-assisted-programming.md>), [code-review](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code-review.md>), [documentation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/documentation.md>), [thoughts](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/thoughts.md>)

## AI overview

An opinion piece arguing that AI-assisted programming can make individual developers faster, but large software projects still depend on teams coordinating a shared understanding of the system.

## Source excerpt

I feel that some vibecoded software changes somewhat randomly and unexpectedly. That made me think about Bruegel's "The Tower of Babel" which shows an already quite chaotic depiction of the Tower of Babel. The story is one of pride and ambition and ultimately why people no longer speak the same language. But it is also a story about the unity that makes technological progress work. The text begins with a technology upgrade: And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. They use it for a civilizational project: let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven But when God assesses the situation the bricks are not what concern him: the people is one, and they have all one language, [...] and now nothing will be restrained from them.1 They get their power through coordination which they have because they share a language. They can use this to coordination to combine their powers and build something no one of them could build alone. God does not take away the bricks or their knowledge of how to make them but their ability to understand one another. With AI-assisted programming we should get better tools which lets us build more ambitious software. That is certainly true at the level of the individual and without doubt a developer with an agent can change a codebase dramatically quicker. But large software projects have never been limited only by how quickly an individual can produce code but they are limited by how well people can coordinate their understanding of the system they are changing. The shared language of a software project is the common understanding shared among its developers. This language is rarely written down in one place but it lives in documentation and code. It can also just be something that comes up in code review or watercooler conversations or when one engineer has to explain a change to someone else. It can be about the architecture