Replit CEO on AI breakthroughs: We don't care about professional coders anymore
74 comments
·January 16, 2025Clubber
>“We don’t care about professional coders anymore,” Masad said.
If you are a coder and your CEO says something like this, you should call his bluff and put in your notice immediately. I bet he will care then.
jsnell
Given the context, it's pretty clear he is talking about their target market, not about their employees. Do you only work on things you're going to use yourself?
Edit:
Look, this is what the article says:
> In essence, Replit’s latest customer base is a new breed of coder: The ones who don’t know the first thing about code.
> “We don’t care about professional coders anymore,” Masad said.
Rather than the outrage-bait this was turned into, the quote was entirely about who their customers are. And it makes perfect sense. What kind of a professional programmer would use these their tools anyway?
marcosdumay
Not immediately; find a new job first.
Looking for a job without having one already is many times harder than looking for one while you stayed for a little longer at yours.
Anyway, without any hint of sentimentalism. If that phrase is honest, that company may not be a stable place to stay on the future.
episteme
In this market? You might be doing him a favour
jihadjihad
The point of TFA appears to be:
> Masad said something that is going to stick with me for a while: “Finding software problems in your life is also a skill, looking at a problem and saying, ‘a piece of software could solve that’ is a skill.”
> Since I can remember, that is a skill that only software developers could capitalize on. Now, pretty much anyone can.
It's true, and even as a software engineer there are things I've thought up in the past but haven't worked on because I'm not well versed with frontend tech. I had an idea the other day for a simple web app, and after some brainstorming and scaffolding with an LLM there is something halfway decent running locally for me.
Feeling "unblocked" and empowered to get something working rather than burdened by all of the minutiae that need to be figured out to ship and iterate on an idea is a great feeling. I wouldn't trust any of the current models to take something to production, but for "personal" software that I can control and manage and spruce up, it's been fun getting to hack on things I haven't felt equipped to tackle solo before.
uludag
I originally thought the headline meant "we don't care about using professional coders at our company anymore and will rely fully on AI," but it looks to actually mean "we don't want our product to focus as being a tool for professional coders anymore, but rather non-coders." This actually makes more sense than I initially thought: it's the simple use-cases that AI's can actually reliably deliver on.
Another interesting point is that it seems that these agentic capabilities are all possible without a proprietary model. So is replit too now essentially just an LLM API wrapper with no moat?
Last thing, the statement “Finding software problems in your life is also a skill, looking at a problem and saying, ‘a piece of software could solve that’ is a skill,” is remarkable. It sounds like Replit realized that most people really don't want to be inundated with writing software and framing this aversion as a problem itself.
marssaxman
It's funny that he presents this as a new direction. I actually interviewed with replit a couple of years back, and it was precisely their accessibility to non-professionals which interested me: the instant online editor/sandbox environment felt like it could be a good next step from Scratch, doing for software development something like what Arduino did for embedded projects. Their appeal for professionals seemed weaker, since we already have so many other options.
I strongly doubt that AI code generation will be any more of a silver bullet than any of the other "it'll be so easy anyone can do it" tools ever have been, but as an effectively infinite library of example starter projects to build on and improve, it could be quite useful.
ahmadtbk
> Instead, he says it’s time for non-coders to begin learning how to use AI tools to build software themselves
More code and applications to maintain in the long run. Being a software engineer will be in more demand than ever. I've noticed many individuals want to create an MVP before committing fully.
Would this also mean more security jobs?
earnestinger
Definitely more work untangling, reverse engineering, optimising things that worked, but eventually reached its Schwarzschild radius.
9rx
There is some thrill in writing code so boring that you still appreciate it when you come back to it a a decade later, but all-in-all I don't care about coding either, and I suspect most of us don't. Problem solving is the business we are actually in.
actsasbuffoon
I actually really enjoy writing code, even after all these years.
awei
Let's say software really can be written completely autonomously by LLMs. I think it d be important to put that leverage in the hands of individual software engineers to build even more and faster, and avoid it being entirely in the hands of a few companies
scarmig
That's ideal for us and the world. It's not ideal for the employing companies, as they can't as effectively extract rents.
So, all the forces are pushing against individual engineers getting that leverage.
awei
Ordinarily, I would say the current situation is great for innovation and economic growth. Only in the case of potentially soon creating very capable LLMs is it questionable. Which situation would bring more innovation and economic growth: a few companies having AGI or every engineer having it? I've been thinking about that a lot, and I'm not sure which it is.
asdev
I don't know any half decent coders who use Replit.
roboror
Efficacy and product quality aside, I think that's the point.
cedws
Wasn’t it just a thing for students to get started with programming without having to setup an environment? What are they doing these days, apart from jumping on the AI grift bandwagon?
rogerthis
I feel, cannot substantiate, but I feel today looks like those days of "Model Driven Design", "Model Driven Architecture", UML code generators, WYSIWYG IDEs.
Just feeling, just feeling.
earnestinger
Chagpt, generate quote about history cycles and/or rhyme
goaaron
open source agents will replace replit in the next year. I understand they probably feel a bit depressed.
ahwelitif
LLM powered regular people won't be able to replace/undercut developers because they don't know how to correctly gather requirements.
The day LLMs start insisting Joe Schmoe non-devs first plan DB schemas/hosting/auth (ie; before responding with random HTML/CSS/JS page demos) is the day I start getting really scared.
djoldman
Wow it's actually a verbatim quote:
> In essence, Replit’s latest customer base is a new breed of coder: The ones who don’t know the first thing about code.
> “We don’t care about professional coders anymore,” Masad said.
> Instead, he says it’s time for non-coders to begin learning how to use AI tools to build software themselves. He is credited with a concept known as “Amjad’s Law” that says the return on learning some code doubles every six months.
hnthrow90348765
These business types only learning enough to prompt an AI will eventually get tired of prodding the AI to fix things, unless Masad here is also selling an AI that will monitor and maintain your infrastructure for you too. They don't even have the patience to listen to developers talk about technical issues in meetings today, they're definitely not cut out for app maintenance work when the technical details start to matter.
He is doing the smart thing and selling shovels though, and this statement is part of that sell.
darth_avocado
Just a random end of the month $10000000 AWS bill will be enough for the shake the faith in AI writing code.
earnestinger
> Instead, he says it’s time for non-coders to begin learning how to use AI tools
Seems reasonable that more people will be able to utilise programability of computers.
People who already created elaborate spreadsheet’s with formulas, now might start also using python/java/go for their benefit. (Eg. Accountant, might start helping with the accounting system maintenance)
I think the headline statement sounds stronger than intended. In the context it reads like: Professional coders (obviously) do not care about Replit, so we focus on a lower segment.