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.
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?
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> He said at one point it might not be possible this decade. Even as he set up an “agent task force” to develop the product last year, he wasn’t sure if it would work. What changed was a new model from Anthropic, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, which achieved a record score on a coding evaluation called SWE-bench in October.
If the entire fortunes of your company and product changes overnight based on models released by other companies, how useful is your product really ?
Amjad has to be the worst hype man ever, none of the stuff he says even sounds convincing.
Readit News
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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?
If the entire fortunes of your company and product changes overnight based on models released by other companies, how useful is your product really ?
Amjad has to be the worst hype man ever, none of the stuff he says even sounds convincing.