Prediction Not checkable as stated
Tom Blomfield says today's software engineering jobs will vanish within 10 years
“But the conclusion of all of that, I think, is that software engineering jobs of today, I think, will not exist in five or 10 years.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Tom Blomfield says AI will fulfill surging global demand for software
“Like I could easily see the demand goes up 10 X or a hundred X, who knows, but I just think the AI is getting so good that you just won't have humans fulfilling that demand in anything but the most niche of niche cases.”
Opinion
Blomfield: Rebranding Twitter to X was total insanity
“I think when you get something short and catchy, and you have the verb, just like total insanity to change, especially for something as meaningless as X, right?”
Insight
Blomfield: Discussing pricing early almost never scares off enterprise prospects
“Founders are often very afraid to have a willingness to pay conversation. They feel like if they bring a dollar amount up, it might scare the customer off. But honestly, that's almost always not true.”
Insight
Blomfield: Early startups should accept customer contract terms unless company-ending
“So I'd be pretty flexible on signing, frankly, whatever your early customers want, as long as it's not going to expose you to like unlimited liability or container clause that's going to transfer all the IP in your product to your customer or something company…”
Opinion
Blomfield: Embedding chatbots into software is almost always the wrong approach
“I kind of hate the kind of chatbot paradigm. Like it was the easiest It was the way to bring the most basic LLM experience to the whole world. You know, we had GPT before ChatGPT and ChatGPT brought it to the mainstream, but now every product is just embedding…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Tom Blomfield predicts stark consequences for software engineering within 12 months
“I think we have a clear line of sight between where we are today and like improvements over the next three, six and 12 months. They're going to have quite stark consequences for software engineering, I think.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tom Blomfield built a 35,000-line app without writing any code manually
“Yeah, 35,000 lines, and I wrote not a single one. And honestly, after about the first 5000 lines, I stopped even reading the code.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Tom Blomfield says future engineers will primarily focus on wrangling AI machines
“I think there will be demand for smart people who know how to wrangle these AI coding machines, and if we want to call those people software engineers, so be it. But I think the job is dramatically, dramatically different.”
Assertion Supported
Tom Blomfield says software startups are reaching revenue milestones faster than ever
“So getting to a 1,000,010 million, a hundred million of revenue with a software idea had is just happening faster and faster than ever.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Tom Blomfield warns AI could displace hundreds of millions of workers
“And you could see hundreds of millions of people displaced, and the idea that they're going to retrain as in a different job, I think is going to be extremely painful. And I can see the societal impact and turmoil being very, very grave for 10 or 20 years as t…”
Insight
Blomfield: A +50 NPS is the minimum baseline for new consumer companies
“If your net promoter score, your MPS, is not extremely high as a new consumer company, you're toast. You pretty much have to re-engineer the product to make it something that people love. The reason is it correlates extremely well with word of mouth referral. …”
Opinion
Blomfield: Google lost its transformer lead to OpenAI through excessive caution
“And so, I think, like, Google were really on the cutting edge of this transformer technology, and were like, leapfrogged by OpenAI, just because I was too cautious to put stuff out there.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Blomfield: In 5 years, 99% of people won't touch their system prompts
“But I, I'd suggest, I think in In five years, for 99% of people, they're not touching their system prompt, but the system prompt is custom to them.”
Opinion
Tom Blomfield says AI makes him 10x more productive than before
“These new tools made me 10 times more powerful, more productive than I was when I was kind of current in, in, you know, software engineering 10 years ago.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tom Blomfield says AI coding in YC startups surged to 25%
“Last batch, that number was 25% of companies. So they use these tools for most of their code. Two batches ago, it was approximately zero percent.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Tom Blomfield predicts trade bodies will act as protectionists against AI
“And so I can see that happening in, in law, in medicine, as these kind of trade bodies act as gatekeepers to try and, almost like protectionist unions, trying to protect the jobs of their members.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Tom Blomfield says AI will transform law and medicine within five years
“So many industries like law or education or medicine that really were not big buyers of software in the past that are going to be transformed in the next five years.”
Opinion
Blomfield: Lovable struggles when modifying backend logic rather than UI
“Tools like Lovable started to struggle when I wanted to more precisely modify backend logic. Rather than just pure UI changes. I'd change a button over here, and the backend logic would bizarrely change.”
Opinion
Blomfield: Using MCP servers for API documentation is overkill
“Using an MCP server to access this documentation, which works for some people, seems like overkill to me.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Blomfield: AI Coding Might Shift Software Architecture Toward Modular Services
“I think we might see a shift towards more modular or service-based architecture where the LLM has clear API boundaries that it can work within while maintaining a consistent external interface Rather than these huge monorepos with massive interdependencies.”
Opinion
Blomfield: Gemini Leads Codebase Planning, Claude 3.7 Leads Code Implementation
“For example, at the moment, Gemini seems best for whole code-based indexing and coming up with implementation plan, while Sonnet 3.7, to me at least, seems like the leading contender to actually implement the code changes.”
Opinion
Blomfield: GPT-4 Underperformed on Coding by Misimplementing and Asking Too Many Questions
“I tried GPT-IV just a couple of days ago, and honestly, I wasn't yet as impressed. It just came back with me with too many questions and actually got the implementation wrong too many times.”
Opinion
Blomfield: Community Notes has done a good job flagging fake news
“And I feel like community notes have done a relatively good job of calling out the stuff that's fake news versus real news actually. So in, in one sense, I think that's been a really positive change.”
Tom Blomfield