Scott Wu: AI will enable software engineers to do 5x more
Scott Wu · No Priors Ep. 62 | With Cognition CEO and Co-Founder Scott Wu · May 2, 2024 · at 10:54
Scott Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Cognition, creator of Devin. He discusses how AI shifts the time allocation and productivity of human engineers.
0:00 / 0:15exact quote · 15.5s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I think the average software shares today might spend 20% of their time thinking through all these, like, really fundamental problem solving questions, and 80% of the time writing that in code. And I think they'll, they'll be able to do five x more, and they'll be able to spend all their time doing this really creative problem solving.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Scott Wu
Scott Wu: AI will lead to more software engineers, not fewer
“I think if anything, there's going to be more engineers, not less and I'll kind of give two reasons why. I think the first is there's just so much demand for engineering out there and so much demand, honestly, even in ways that we don't always think about, rig…”
Wu: Devin autonomously makes decisions and executes engineering tasks end-to-end
“Devin is, is fully able to make all of its own decisions in the same way that a human software engineer would. And so you know, obviously writing and editing code is a huge piece of that, but also, you know, being able to work with the command line, being able…”
Wu: In 10 years, learning coding languages will seem obsolete
“You know, I think 10 years from now, people will look back and think, wow, isn't it crazy that, you know, you had to learn all these esoteric languages and you had to, you know, work through all these stack traces or whatever just to be able to communicate wit…”
Wu: Future software engineers will resemble technical architect and product manager hybrids
“I think the, you know, I think the role of A software engineer five or 10 years from now, it looks something like a mix between a technical architect and a product manager today, you know, where, where a lot of what you do is, you know, you take problems that …”
Wu: Devin executes precise specifications rather than deciding product direction
“Devin is very much not the one who is going to be deciding what to do. If that makes sense. And so, you know, we very much think of Devin as you provide the precise formulation of what you want built or what you want done, and Devin is the one that is doing th…”
Scott Wu: Great startups, like math competitions, require identifying non-intuitive truths
“A lot of the really great math or programming problems are kind of about, you know, what are all these assumptions that you take for granted and which one of those might actually not be true, you know and a lot of these really tough problems and really interes…”