Programming Languages for AI Agents

Julien Verlaguet is Founder and CEO of SkipLabs, the company building Skipper, a closed-loop coding agent. He created Skip, a reactive programming language, and led the design of Hack, the language Meta developed to run its code base at scale. In this episode, we discuss what the job of programming language designers becomes when AI agents write most of the code. This includes the design decisions in the language and tooling when agents are the principal user. We also discuss: - How Julien refocused SkipLabs towards AI - What it would take for AI to be able to fully replace engineers - The use of formal methods with LLMs Full episode notes Transcript Chapters (00:00) - A closed-loop coding agent (04:30) - Reactive programming and technical debt (08:40) - Why SkipLabs moved toward AI tooling (11:07) - Incremental tools and low-latency feedback (14:20) - Reactive collections versus Buck and Make (21:06) - Language design in the age of LLMs (31:01) - When human coding still matters (34:16) - Working with four to six agents (41:04) - Why code quality still needs judgment (49:48) - The hidden cost of AI-generated tests (56:24) - The junior engineer dilemma (01:04:27) - Formal methods and LLM verification (01:13:35) - A bumpy road toward a brighter future ⠀ Links from the show -------------------- Skipper SkipLabs Skip Hack reactive programming incremental computation Buck SQLite Coq Rocq Lean Curry-Howard correspondence formal methods model checking Emacs Bun ⠀ Guests ------- Julien Verlaguet, Founder and CEO, SkipLabs Website LinkedIn ⠀ Follow the podcast ------------------- LinkedIn Threads Instagram TikTok ⠀ Follow Dan Gerlanc ------------------- X LinkedIn Threads Bluesky