Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) will take over 90 per cent of programming work by eliminating repetitive tasks.
“When people say ‘AI will write 90 per cent of the code’ I readily agree because 90 per cent of what programmers write is ‘boiler plate’,” wrote Mr Vembu on X (formerly Twitter).
“There is “essential complexity” in programming and then there is a lot of “accidental complexity” (that is the boiler plate stuff) and this is very old wisdom from the Mythical Man Month,” he added.
According to Mr Vembu, while AI effectively removes accidental complexity, human expertise remains essential for tackling core challenges.
“In essence, AI can make mincemeat of patterns already discovered (by humans). Can it find totally new patterns?”
When people say “AI will write 90% of the code” I readily agree because 90% of what programmers write is “boiler plate”.
There is “essential complexity” in programming and then there is a lot of “accidental complexity” (that is the boiler plate stuff) and this is very old wisdom…
— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) March 22, 2025
Mr Vembu stepped down as the CEO of the software major in January to focus on research and development initiatives, especially with the advent of AI.
“In view of the various challenges and opportunities facing us, including recent major developments in AI, it has been decided that it is best that I should focus full time on R&D initiatives, along with pursuing my personal rural development mission,” he said at the time.
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‘Less software engineers’
The former Zoho CEO is not the only tech leader who rings the warning bell for coders. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has stated that the development of AI models might eventually reduce the need for software engineers.
“Each software engineer will just do much, much more for a while,” Mr Altman said in a recent interview. “And then at some point, yeah, maybe we do need less software engineers.”
Mr Altman added that in many companies, “at least half” of code was already being written by AI. “I think in many companies, it’s probably past 50 per cent now,” he said, highlighting that the next leap-“agentic coding”– is still on the horizon.