Marc Andreessen and Amjad Masad: English As the New Programming Language

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a16z

Science, Innovation, Business, Entrepreneurship, Culture, Disruption, Software Eating The World, Technology

4.4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2025

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Amjad Masad, founder and CEO of Replit, joins a16z’s Marc Andreessen and Erik Torenberg to discuss the new world of AI agents, the future of programming, and how software itself is beginning to build software. They trace the history of computing to the rise of AI agents that can now plan, reason, and code for hours without breaking, and explore how Replit is making it possible for anyone to create complex applications in natural language. Amjad explains how RL unlocked reasoning for modern models, why verification loops changed everything, whether LLMs are hitting diminishing returns — and if “good enough” AI might actually block progress toward true general intelligence.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We're dealing with magic here that we, I think, probably all would have thought was impossible five years ago, or certainly 10 years ago.
0:05.0	This is the most amazing technology ever, and it's moving really fast, and yet we're still really disappointed. Like, it's not moving fast enough, and like, it's right on the verge of falling out. We should both be, like, hyper excited, but also on the verge of, like, slitting our wrists. It's like, you know, the gravy train is coming to an ad. It is faster, but it's not at computer speed, right?
0:21.0	Right.
0:22.0	What we expect computer speed to be.
0:23.0	It's sort of like watching a person work. every train is coming to an end. Right. It is faster, but it's not at computer speed, right? Right.
0:21.6	What we expect computer speed to be.
0:22.6	It's sort of like watching a person work.
0:24.6	It's like watching John Carmack on cocaine.
0:27.6	The world, okay, the world's best programmer on a stimulus.
0:31.6	Yeah, that's right.
0:33.6	Every few decades, programming takes a massive leap forward, and this might be the biggest
0:39.3	one yet.
0:40.4	In this episode, Mark Andrescent and I are joined by Amjad Masad, CEO and founder of Replit,
0:45.7	to talk about how AI agents are changing what it means to code.
0:49.4	We discussed the end of syntax, the rise of agents that can think and build software for
0:53.6	hours, and how
0:54.8	reinforcement learning and verification loops are pushing AI towards something that looks a lot like
0:59.3	reasoning. And finally, Amjad shares his story from hacking his university database in Jordan
1:04.5	to building one of the most powerful developer tools in the world. Let's get into it.
1:27.6	So let's start with, let's assume that I'm a sort of a novice programmer. So maybe I'm a student, or maybe I'm just somebody, I took a few coding classes and I've hacked around a little bit, or I don't know, I do Excel macros or something like that. But I'm like not, as it swells, I'm not like a master crossman of coding. And somebody tells me about Replit and specifically AI and Replit. What's my experience when I launch in with what Replit is today with
1:32.5	AI? Yeah, I think the experience of someone with no coding experience or some coding experience is largely
1:37.7	the same when you go into Replit. The first thing we try to do is get all the nonsense away from
	...

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