From: IEEE Spectrum
| Cursor, the AI-native code editor, recently reported that it writes nearly a billion lines of code daily. That’s one billion lines of production-grade code accepted by users every single day. If we generously assume that a strong engineer writes a thousand lines of code in a day, Cursor is doing the equivalent work of a million developers. (For context, while working at Pinterest and Meta, I’d typically write less than 100 lines of code per day.) There are only about 25 million software developers worldwide! Naively, it appears that Cursor is making a meaningful percentage of coders obsolete. This begs the question: Is it even worth learning to code anymore? The answer is a resounding “yes.” The above fear-based analysis of Cursor misses several important points. First, the demand for software is insatiable. Getting a computer to follow our instructions properly (i.e., coding) is economically incredibly valuable. However, for decades now, the number of people with the specialized skill to communicate with computers has been limited. If AI tools let us write more functional code, many more people, companies, and industries will benefit. As Marc Andreesen famously alluded to in his 2011 essay “Why Software Is Eating the World,” the demand for software is elastic. As software becomes cheaper, we see a disproportionately large increase in demand. Another critical observation is that AI-assisted code is simply a continuation of the evolution of software development. In the 1970s, we used to program with punch cards. Then we started writing low-level code with a keyboard. Then we shifted to higher-level languages. Each successive era saw large increases in the number of software engineers while simultaneously improving the productivity of each person. We’ve seen this storyline before: AI is just another tool to give us superpowers. Coding tools like Cursor or Devin are less about replacing software engineers than they are about increasing the number of software engineers. Going forward, writing code won’t be restricted to those with a particular title; everyone including lawyers, accountants, and doctors will develop software. Cursor won’t replace the 25 million software engineers we have today. Instead, it will create millions more. |
| By Rahul Pandey, Taro founder |