The world of programming is changing, and it’s changing fast.
Jared Friedman, Group Partner at Y Combinator, recently shared a statistic that underscores how the nature is programming is rapidly changing. In a discussion, Friedman revealed the astonishing extent to which AI is now being used to generate code within Y Combinator-backed startups. The sheer percentage of code now being AI-generated, coupled with the technical proficiency of the founders utilizing these tools, paints a fascinating picture of the future of software development.
Friedman began by explaining the specific question YC posed to the founders. “So, we explicitly asked this question: what percent of your code base do you estimate is AI generated? The way I intended the question is, of the actual characters in your code base, not including any libraries that you import, what percentage of the characters were typed by human hands versus emitted by an LLM?” he said.
“And the crazy thing is, one-quarter of the founders said that more than 95% of their code base was AI generated, which is an insane statistic. And it’s not like we funded a bunch of non-technical founders. Every one of these people is highly technical, completely capable of building their own product from scratch. A year ago, they would have built their own product from scratch. But now, 95% of it is built by an AI.”
Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan then brought up an even more interesting example. “We have two examples…they’re so young that they learned to code in the last two years. So they actually don’t know a world where Copilot didn’t exist,” he said.
Friedman concluded with an observation about one of his most promising companies: “Yeah, this is one of my best companies this batch, actually. The founders are extremely technical minds, but they’re not classically trained in computer science and programming. And they are incredibly productive and able to produce just a ton of really amazing product, and AI is writing almost the entire thing.”
The implications of Friedman’s observations are profound. The fact that a quarter of Y Combinator companies – known for its rigorous selection process and backing of technically strong founders – are leveraging AI to generate the vast majority of their code signals a paradigm shift in software development. This isn’t about replacing developers; it’s about augmenting their capabilities. These founders are not less skilled because they use AI; instead, they could be significantly more productive, able to iterate faster, and potentially bring more innovative products to market more quickly.
This trend raises several important questions. Will this lead to a greater democratization of software development, empowering individuals without traditional coding backgrounds to build complex applications? How will this impact the demand for traditional coding skills? And perhaps most importantly, how can we ensure the quality, security, and maintainability of code generated primarily by AI? The answers to these questions will shape the future of the software industry and the role of human developers within it.