Having extensive programming experience can be your best asset. At least if you work at Spotify. Artificial intelligence can become your great ally.
During the presentation of results for the fourth quarter of 2025, the company’s co-CEO, Gustav Söderström stated that his best engineers have not written a single line of code by hand since last December. In short, there is already someone, or rather something, who is 100% in charge of this.
The secret of this change has its own name: Honk. This is an internal system that Spotify has developed to integrate generative AIspecifically tools like Claude Code, in the workflow.
Thanks to this, the company has been able to launch more than 50 new features in a single year, including playlists created by text or context tools for audiobooks that have appeared in recent weeks.
From the top of the company they assure that this is not the end of the road, but simply the beginning of a new era. The idea is that the programmer stops being a builder and becomes an architect.
It is no longer so important to know where to put each semicolon, but rather to know what you want to create and how to direct the artificial intelligence to do it without errors. Spotify claims that this system has accelerated the deployment capacity «tremendously», allowing changes to reach your mobile almost in real time.
«As a concrete example, a Spotify engineer, on his morning commute from Slack on his phone, can ask Claude to fix a bug or add a new feature to the iOS app,» says Söderström. «And once Claude finishes that job, the engineer receives a new version of the app, which is sent to Slack on his mobile, so he can integrate it into production, all before arriving at the office,» he adds.
No more spending long hours coding on Spotify
For the music company, this change means that its most experienced developers, those who have been wasting their time for years on repetitive and uncreative tasks, no longer spend energy on all this.
Of course, and although Honk’s AI is capable of programming an entire function while the engineer waits, there is always a human who reviews, corrects and decides if that code is ready to reach the application. AI has not replaced the developer.
«It is the end of programming by writing code by hand»
As expected, all that glitters is not gold and there are many voices against this type of process. While it is true that it frees up a lot of the time of these developers, AI is not as perfect as it seems.
Even so, and especially by trusting in the experience and control of those senior programmers as Spotify is doing, it seems that this technology is being a great ally.
In Ars Technica They have spoken with several developers to really know where they are at this whole issue right now. David Hagerty, who programs point-of-sale systems, states that «yes, AI companies exaggerate, but the truth is that these tools already change everything. They are not going to write novels or anything like that, but for programming they are amazing».
Roland Dreier, who has worked on Linux, confirms this. According to him, in six months the AI went from helping a little to doing entire tasks alone. «I tell him ‘this test fails, fix it’ and he does it. For large projects, it’s up to ten times faster than writing it myself.»
But all this is not just rosy and there is fear. They no longer only talk about the potential mistakes that AI can make, which is a topic to talk about at length. The fact of what will happen to their employment is also on the minds of many.
One of the programmers interviewed flatly states that yes, AI is going to take away their jobs: «First writing code, then architecture, then product management. Anyone who doesn’t adapt, out.»
However, it seems that Spotify has found a good middle ground. The most novices will have to learn the old way, while the most experienced will be able to count on the help of this technology to invest their time in more creative aspects that improve the app. At least here, and for now, no one is going out into the streets.