AI and the Future of Programming

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The first thing I asked Replit founder, Amjad Masad, is whether he’d still want his kids to learn to code.

Amjad is both a long-time programmer, and the founder of Replit—the newest AI unicorn. They're a web-based development environment that announced this week that they raised almost $100m dollars at a $1.6B valuation from a16z and a host of other top investors. They’ve built a Github CoPilot competitor, called GhostWriter, and part of their mission is to give every programmer an AI team member that can write code for them.

So, I wanted to know, does programming still matter?

He told me that he believes that the leverage on programming skills has gone way up in the last year. He thinks that the current generation of AI tools are inherently augmenting tools, not automating tools. They might change the bundle of skills you need to be a programmer—you might act more like a guide or a manager in many instances than writing code yourself. But he believes that programming skills actually become more important in an AI-driven world. So yes, he still wants his kids to learn to code.

In other words: even though he could—and even though maybe he should—Amjad isn’t blindly banging the AI drum.

He actually struck me as one of the few people in the space who has the right level of excitement. Replit has been prototyping AI tools for the last 3-4 years, long before they were popular. So Replit isn’t a Johnny-come-lately entrant into this space. Instead he’s someone who believes deeply in the long term potential of the technology, but can also acknowledge its significant present limitations. He does a good job of not swinging between poles of mania or doom, and I left the interview feeling grounded, and smarter.

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We covered his thoughts on two big topics: the future of programming, and how startups can win against incumbents in the AI race. The second is something Amjad knows a lot about too. Replit’s going up against Microsoft in a quest to own how you build software with AI. And so, they’re facing the biggest question every single one of today’s startups has to face: how do you build and win with an AI product against a better funded incumbent that also has access to AI?

Amjad has a plan. Read on to learn more.