When someone says “AI will write 90% of the code,” Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu doesn’t push back. He agrees. But not for the usual reasons. Vembu believes most of that code is just “boiler plate”—and AI is well-equipped to wipe it out.
In a post on X, Vembu wrote, “When people say ‘AI will write 90% of the code’ I readily agree because 90% of what programmers write is ‘boiler plate’.” He explained that programming has two kinds of complexity—“essential complexity” and “accidental complexity”—a concept he credits to the classic software engineering text, The Mythical Man-Month.
According to Vembu, “AI is doing a great job eliminating the accidental complexity. Humans still needed to deal with the essential complexity.”
But can AI go beyond clean-up mode?
“AI can make mincemeat of patterns already discovered (by humans). Can it find totally new patterns?” he wrote. “As with humans, that is much rarer and a quality known as ‘taste’ or ‘knowing where to dig’ or ‘follow a hunch or conviction all the way’ is needed to discover new patterns. I don't know if AI can do this. I don't know if that can be brute forced.”
Outside the realm of AI, Vembu also spotlighted India’s manufacturing gains—especially in the mid-sized machinery sector. In a separate X post responding to industrialist Thomas Savan, he praised companies in Maharashtra and Gujarat for building high-precision machines that were once imported.
“I am very happy to see this tweet. It makes me want to go visit these companies! We have to demonstrate the ability to make complex machines that make advanced products and we need to make those machines affordable,” Vembu wrote.
He added that India must start by making everyday household goods in small towns through distributed manufacturing. Scaling up, he said, will need robust industrial R&D across tech domains.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also recently backed the 'Make in India' push, highlighting ₹1.5 lakh crore in PLI-driven investments and 9.5 lakh jobs