Like, look at e.g. YC minus the AI and AI ajacent companies. Are those startups meaningfully more impressive or feature-rich as compared to a couple years ago?
I expect we will start seeing the impact of the new coding agent enhanced development processes over the next few months.
If agents could really compress 10 years of development into 1 year, you'd see people making e.g. HFT platforms and becoming obscenely rich, not making a fun open-source project and getting hired by OpenAI as an employee.
https://tools.simonwillison.net/github-repo-stats?repo=OpenC...
I meant a month for the initial release, not current state.
Regardless, much like lines of code, number of commits is not a good metric, not even as a proxy, for how much "work" was actually done. Quickly browsing there are plenty[0] of[1] really[2] small[3] commits[4]. Agentic coding naturally optimizes for small commits because that's what the process is meant to do, but it doesn't mean that more work is being done, or that the work is effective. If anything, looking at the changelog[5] OpenClaw feels like a directionless dumpster fire right now. I would expect a lot more from a project if it had multiple people working on it for 5 years, pre-AI.
[0] https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/commit/e43ae8e8cd1ffc07...
[1] https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/commit/377c69773f0a1b8e...
[2] https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/commit/ffafa9008da249a0...
[3] https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/commit/506b0bbaad312454...
[4] https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/commit/512f777099eb19df...
[5] https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md
> (Whether or not you trust the quality of the software you can't deny the impact it had in such a short time. It defined a new category of software.)
I brought up OpenClaw here because the challenge was:
> we still have no companies compressing 10 years into 1 year thus exploding past all the incumbents who don't "get it".
I don't know anything about the code quality of OpenClaw, but telling me the number of commits tells me precisely nothing of use.
I expect there is no number I could bring up here that won't be instantly shot down as telling "precisely nothing". My mistake for bringing up any numbers at all.
OpenClaw is a good example of a completely new project written using coding agents that made a significant impression on the world and would not have been built without them.
I'm surprised this is a hill I have to die on, but there we are.
(I'm not even a user of OpenClaw! I don't think it's secure or safe enough to use in my own life.)
If that were true, all of these anti-AI greybeards who have been in the game for 30 years would all own their own jets.
Which is exactly why you can't use it as an example, there is no control. This is basic stuff.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/openclaw-enthusiasm-grips...
Cryptocurrencies? Barely any other use than money laundering, buying drugs and betting on the outcome of battles in war. And NFTs? No use at all other than money laundering and setting money ablaze.