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Artificial Intelligence (AI) rapidly changing our world in many subtle ways without many of us even realizing it, and such area which is being reshaped by AI is software development, as industry leaders, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Sridhar Vembu of Zoho Corporation, have flagged concerns that AI will nearly eliminate the need for manual coding in the coming future.
In a post on X, Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu said he agrees with the belief that AI will write 90% of the code in the near future, because according to Vembu 90% of what human programmers write is “boiler plate”. “When people say ‘AI will write 90% of the code’ I readily agree because 90% of what programmers write is “boiler plate’,” he wrote.
Referencing the difference between “essential complexity” and “accidental complexity,” concepts from the book ‘Mythical Man Month’ by Fred Brooks, Vembu said that while AI does a great job at removing accidental complexity, human are still required deal with the essential complexity.
Sridhar Vembu also questioned whether AI cand discover new patterns that have not been discovered yet by humans. “AI can make mincemeat of patterns already discovered (by humans). Can it find totally new patterns? As with humans, that is much rarer and a quality known as ‘taste’ or ‘knowing where to dig” or ‘follow a hunch or conviction all the way; is needed to discover new patterns. I don’t know if AI can do this. I don’t know if that can be brute forced,” he added.
Meanwhile, OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman flagged concerns over the growing role of AI in software development, warning that it would result in a drastic reduction of human software engineers in the future. Altman noted that while the transition is unlikely to happen overnight, but then “at some point, yeah, maybe we do need less software engineers.”
In an interview with Stratechery’s Ben Thompson, Sam Altman revealed AI was already over 50 percent of code in many companies, and highlighted need for mastering AI tools to stay ahead of the curve as coding skills are becoming increasing redundant and do not provide a competitive edge anymore.
“The obvious tactical thing is just getting really good at using AI tools,” Altman said, while contrasting the current landscape with the early 2000s when skilled coders held an edge in the market.
The OpenAI chief also highlighted the potential of “agentic coding,” where AI autonomously tackles complex development tasks, though he admitted that “no one’s doing it for real yet.”
Notably, other tech leaders like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have echoed Altman’s views on AI dominating the software development industry in the near future. Amodei has predicted that AI will be responsible for writing all software code within a year, while Zuckerberg, in a conversation with Joe Rogan in January, revealed that AI will soon generate a significant portion of their application code.
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