Vembu cautions engineers against ceding understanding to AI coding tools

Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has urged software engineers to treat artificial intelligence as an aid rather than a substitute for their own technical judgement, warning that the industry may be adopting AI-driven development faster than it can grasp the consequences.

Writing on X, Vembu said engineers should make use of AI tools while continuing to understand the work those tools produce. "I tell our engineers to use AI but never cede our understanding to AI," he said.

His remarks followed a post by a software engineer describing how Anthropic's Claude Code was being used at a large company across several stages of software development, including specifications, code, tests, product requirement documents, tickets, ticket resolutions and reports.

The engineer wrote that no one on the team was happy with the arrangement and that employees were being pushed to ship as much as possible. According to the post, staff worked 12 to 13 hours a day, much of it spent instructing AI tools rather than writing or analysing code directly.

The engineer said there was little time to review AI-generated code or understand how different components of the software interacted. "People are working 12 to 13 hours a day just to press enter," the post said.

It also questioned whether faster delivery was coming at the cost of problem-solving and technical understanding, adding that the goal had become to ship regardless of the outcome.

Vembu described the situation as sad and cautioned that the software industry could be moving towards AI-powered development at a pace that outstrips people's understanding of the technology. "As an industry, we are driving too fast in a fancy new car we barely understand how to drive, inviting disaster," he said.