Cognition CEO Scott Wu explains how Jevons paradox applies to AI-assisted software development.
Opinion
Scott Wu: Programming will become more important as AI gets more powerful
“And so in that lens, I really think that programming is, if anything, is only going to become more and more important as AI gets more powerful.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Scott Wu: Devin will author over 50% of Cognition's code by year-end
“I think by the end of this year, we expect it to be more than half.”
Prediction Open · timeframe May 2028
Wu: There will be far more software engineers in a few years
“And so if anything, I think there's going to be, I think there's going to be way more product, way more programmers and way more engineers, you know, a few years from now than there are today.”
Opinion
Wu: Base model intelligence is already sufficient for autonomous software engineering
“I think that my hot take here, which I would give is I think the, I think in terms of base intelligence, we're honestly basically already there. And I think a lot of what we see actually, and what we spend our time on is less so, obviously we don't pre-train o…”
Opinion
Wu: Aspiring engineers should absolutely still learn to code
“And first of all, the question of, you know, whether you should still learn the code, my answer would be absolutely yes. I think to a large extent, you know, computer science, when you take computer science classes and when you learn these fundamentals, sure, …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Wu: Agentic workflows will unlock 200% to 1,000% software engineering gains
“I think we're going to shift more and more towards this agentic workflow because, you know, that's in some ways it's kind of like that the way to really get to that, you know, 200%, 500%, a thousand percent gains that, that, that, that we'll be getting to with…”