What’s Next for GitHub?

We are now going to move into Um what's next for GitHub which has been Long a developer of core developer Workflows but over the last course of The last few years the company started Going well beyond a code repository and A collaboration service to a large Degree thanks to its co-pilot code Completion service so you're about to Hear now from CEO Thomas domku on what's Next for GitHub as it expands and this Session will be moderated by Techcrunch's one and only SAS expert Frederick ladenoir over to you Frederick Foreign [Music] All right Any GitHub users here Yeah I'm not surprised most of you makes Sense makes sense and you don't all work For him right if not we have a startup Program I'm surprised there's actually people Who don't use GitHub yet Um Now this session is about what's next For GitHub but I want to take it back Just a few years yeah because he ended Up at Microsoft when you sold hockey app Now if you don't remember hockey I was Kind of like test flight crashlytics of Its time 2014 And you decided to stay at Microsoft all

This time Why you say that in such a cynical way Side of the state Microsoft yeah so yeah Hockey app was mobile app testing at the Time you know in 2014 mobile was still The hottest thing and we were bootstrap Startup of about 10 or so folks based in Germany and Microsoft moved us to Seattle as part of the deal and as per Usual in those deals I had a three year Golden handcuff and so I could have left I guess December 2017 but always on Along the way at Microsoft things Happened that I would say saved me or That motivated me again in 2016 early 2016 xamarin also a mobile company lets You use.net to build mobile apps got Acquired um it's co net Friedman became My boss at Microsoft so it was kind of Like two startup Founders together you Know scheming what we could do um to to Take over the world and in 2018 then we Had the idea of acquiring GitHub and um You know got approval from the bar to do That and that pulled me into that deal That because he needed somebody who had Startup experience who knew kind of like Not only product and Engineering I was a Product manager at the time but also Understood how HR and finance are Running I had done a number of deals um You know in the meantime and so I became This the steel lead at Microsoft kind of Like the person behind the scenes that

Were pulling all the strings you know in Big companies the biggest issue is that Always some something is slowing it down Something is blocking it and you have to See that and unblock it soon enough Because otherwise you know you're six Months into the deal and it's still not Closed and so we closed in October and Ned asked me hey uh you want to join GitHub with me and I'm like sure what Would I do and he's like I don't know we Figure that out later I'm like that Sounds like a step back in my career and It's like oh you're overthinking it you Know it will be fine and then yeah two Years ago became the CEO do you think Ned already had a plan for you no I Think the plan was to have fun and and We know we both love developer tools That was our background and we wanted You know to to make GitHub something Amazing what did you think when you Heard that Nat was leaving and you were Going to step into those shoes Um I well I didn't know first when he Told me when he was leaving that I would Become the CEO that that obviously Wasn't his decision he gave a Recommendation uh to Scott Guthrie at Microsoft you know of who could be the Successor there's you know obviously Succession planning in large companies Like Microsoft and um I was excited and A little bit skeptical I'd say um

Whether this actually will work out it's My wife's skeptical well I you know it's It's um it's a big job Um I you know I'm uh fcso by now uh from Germany uh coming out from a very Different background Um and um I was excited about it and Excited about the opportunity and um When Scott called me and says hey I want To offer you the job I was even more you Know thrilled about what we can do and Then and that I will be the one that Brings GitHub forward Bringing forward GitHub has meant mostly Co-pilot and AI were you were you Already thinking about that at the time When you took the job was that yeah so The um the co-part history actually goes Three years back um we started working On co-pilot in the middle of the Pandemic in in June of 2020 uh we had Seen early Um versions of gpd3 a team at GitHub Um you know jumped on a on a zoom call Um together with me and Ned and a couple Of other folks and it was a little bit Of dictating prompts to UGA de Moore who At the time LED get a GitHub next team You know to to synthesize python methods And we were blown away that gpd3 in June 2023 years ago you know long before the Current AI hype was actually able to Synthesize proper python methods and we Went um and asked our staff and

Principal Engineers to give us some Coding exercises you know what you would Use um in an interview Loop in Declaration in a description and then The body is stripped out and the model Was able to solve all of these 230 Programming exercises and 92 percent of Them and so we were convicted in June 2020 that we could build a product that Makes developers more productive more Happy so when I became the CEO in in Late 21 the the goal really was okay we Had the Prototype we had the preview now We need to bring this into into Production product I'll see that first Demo already more or less convinced you That this is going to work I mean I you Know as a German I'd say I was skeptical That this would scale the thing always Is when you innovate in these what we Call Horizon 3 projects you know the Projects that Define of how we work in The next three to five years is do you Get it to 90 And Beyond so so customers would Actually buy it because if it's only 50 Percent uh you quickly get into a Situation where the customer is excited And then turns turns in the opposite Direction of saying this is this is all and I can't actually use that to Build my products I I'd say I hide my Natural German skepticism and but as we As we progressed in this and as our own

Engineers at GitHub adopted the staff Ship in early 2021 and we saw NPS Something which is really really high For both our industry but also my team And the amount of code that was writing We started to be more convicted was There a moment though in the process Where you're like oh this is not Gonna go and well and it's not gonna Work I think you know the in our day-to-day Um at GitHub we always have these Moments um I think the challenge Um for those that I know Founders and CEO in the rooms is I kind of like Managing your tolerance of discomfort You know the job of the CEO is always Managing through some skepticism some Escalation some crises you know some Unhappy customer in outage and and you Never get done you know there's always a New thing and it I think the key is Somebody once said you know if you're if You're not seeing friction if you're not Seeing uh High emotions you're not Actually working on the real thing You're not working on something that Means something to people sure now you Hitched Your Wagon on open AI pretty Early on right Um did that ever make you nervous Because now you depend on a third party To help you build such a crucial product Yeah I I don't think it made us nervous

You know because why we why we have the Strong partnership with Microsoft and Openai and and we're quite frankly are Seeing a lot of acceleration through Their Partnership if you think about you Know co-pilot and how it works those That haven't seen it you know you type In your editor and it auto completes the Next line or math full methods so Coachless latency latency needs to be Really low because if if you're typing 10 characters in the suggestions for the First three then you're not going to Accept that and so Microsoft for example Has gpus you know in Azure data centers Around the world which allows us to run Copilot efficiency close to where the Developer is but we also you know have Done model comparisons and we do them All the time so we know where opening Eyes models are compared to you know Both the open source competition and and Competitive products and we are you know On a good path at Savers GPT 3.5 and Gpt4 3.5 is fast low latency 4 has much Higher accuracy um and so we feel good About that sure do you ever think about Building your own Model It's I mean you know we I'd say we have Done experiments um um if you actually You know look at Microsoft as a bit of a Bigger picture GitHub is part of What's Called the developer division or devdiff

Devdiff in Visual Studio had a feature Called intellicode uh for quite some Time I want to say it's at minimum five Years if not longer and before that There was intellisense which was more Basic Auto completion and intellicode Um works the way that it takes your code And trains a local model on this which Is only for you and so as such you know We have as devdiff as Microsoft we have Done that over the years and obviously Both Microsoft and GitHub we have Trained our own models for certain for Certain use cases outside of of code Completion and and so we know what it Takes and um uh you know I think the Scrappiness of GitHub was always to take What's available to us and and build Great products that make developers Happy Our developers happy yeah I mean you can Just go you know on uh on X I guess um Or on LinkedIn nobody goes to X nobody Goes to X anymore I don't know but you Can just go on social media and um it's Actually very interesting in the early Days you know it was the you know the Super fans of GitHub that would try it Out and some were skeptical at first and And and couldn't believe that this would Work in the same way that I couldn't Believe it um and then they would you Know tweet about it and say this is Actually magical and it feels like it's

Learning uh what I'm doing which it Doesn't do the model doesn't actually Learn from you but it uses the context Of your of the file everything above the Curse everything below the cursor Adjacent tabs all that context and so as You You get kind of adjusted to it as you Know how to prompt it how to write a bit More explicit comments when you write Your methods it feels like it is magical And in the meantime Now You See You Know Chief security officers Chief software Officers ctOS on LinkedIn posting how Their organizations are adopting Co-pilot more than 27 000 organizations Have adopted co-pilot as of our last Earnings call and so we see tremendous Momentum I'd say something that we Haven't really seen in developer tools For a long time What's the acceptance rate now for the Suggestions you get from the code Completion yeah so there's three metrics You know um that we are tracking uh Across the board one is acceptance rate So how often do you press the Tab Key And that's in the range of 30 to 35 Percent and we did a publish a study in June where we actually looked at less Experienced developers to more Experienced developers and less Experienced developers have a higher Acceptance rate but also acceptance rate

Over time and so it goes up as you use Copilot more than six months you have About five percent higher rate than in The first months we also track how much Code is written you know that's about Half and on average 46 percent uh some Languages like Java has have 62 percent And if you have ever coded in Java you Know this you have to always do try Catch try catch right and if you have a String operation well the null Point Exception is is so common in code you You never have to type that anymore just Type the Tab Key You got those numbers down it's very Well I missed one number which is the Hack developer happiness which is 75 and Again like this is the thing that Matters most to us as as GitHub that we Make uh developers more happy in fact um You know I have my leadership team in Town our head GitHub headquarter is uh Near the ballpark Um where it was for the last I don't Know seven eight years and um we looked At all slides from the early days of GitHub and kind of like do a bit of a Flashback Um and one of these slides had you know Over here our mission is to make Developers more happy that was always True and it's still true now for here 30 35 acceptance rate at first that sounds Somewhat low right I mean there's 70 I

Don't accept Which is high Well I think you know the the way you Can think about this is um or one way You can think about this is um your IPhone keyboard Um uh you know you always tweet Suggestions so you can naturally only Accept one of them or none of them but It's also as as you're a developer you Know in the beginning of the sentence in The beginning of the line that you're Writing the prediction always has Certain probability that it's not not Right Um and you know that when you're typing Emails in or documents in Google mail or Google Docs naturally it doesn't know at The beginning of the paragraph where You're going to go and so that's number One number two is you know as you're Typing out your thoughts there's a Certain moment in the flow when you're Actually ready to read and understand What the suggestion is and and in a way Co-pilot gets you more into a right read Understand flow instead of just writing It down and then being blocked and then You have to go to the browser and so as Such I wouldn't expect this number to go To 100 or even 70 and it's a co-pilot Right we name the co-pilot for that Reason and so we have happy with this Because we see you know the productivity

Gains sure and we've mostly talked about The code completion so far you also Launched copilot chat a few months ago Yeah until now there was only available To business users on the more expensive Plan I think you got some news for us Today correct we're incredibly excited That starting today um co-pilot chat is In public preview for all individuals so You don't have to sign up for a wait List you don't have to wait for us you Can just use your co-pilot account and Install the co-pilot chat extension in Vs code we announced copile chat first As part of our vision for where Coolpad Is going to go co-pilot X in back in March and In those six months the product has Immensely improved and we're really Getting to the point where natural Language is the way that you're that You're writing code and that you're Interacting with your code you know you Can now highlight code and ask questions About it you can you know in in JavaScript and typescript you often have Very simple errors where you forget a Comma so you can just do inline chat in The editor and ask what's what's wrong In this line and it says oh you know There's a comma missing after the react Keyword and so we're really going into a Phase where you have this purple grammar You know that purple gamma that never

Judges you right like the power of these Chat agents is that they do not judge You like your co-workers do and it Doesn't it doesn't matter whether they Actually judge you about this in your Head right like if you all know what It's like you join a new team you want To contribute to an open source project Your biggest fear unless you're Linus Towards is that the other people tell You that your code is bad and and that They will never merge this and or you're Asking all the what you think are stupid Questions and so your team you know Attack crunch will say Frederick doesn't Know what he's doing why did we hire him Right and so they wouldn't be wrong it's This power of co-pilot chat that you Know we are now bringing to to everybody On GitHub and in fact you know now today You have it in vs code and in visual Studio and in the near future you will See um a co-pilot in every part of the Developer life cycle you will have chat You know on on github.com and when you Read issues and pull requests you will Have you know chat in our mobile app There will be chat everywhere and you Will use not natural language will the Be the key ingredient of of how you Engage with your software yeah you said The last time we talked that Ai and Coding are now inextricably linked yeah For the foreseeable future you fully

Believe that right that that there's Just that's how coding is going to Happen for the next 20 25 years until we just think yeah I Mean I think it has already happened I Think actually we already passed you Know we you could say we already crossed The chasm with a developer AI in um in 2023 we're not no longer talking about You know the early adopters we're Talking about the early majority you Know which is this whole concept of the Chasm and in a way software development Software developers are the first part Of the workforce that have truly Embraced AI as part of their workflow Because the productivity gains are so High and whether you're a small startup They're just getting started and or Whether you're a large company you Really don't want to leave this Productivity gains behind that you're Getting from co-pilot that you're Getting from you know I know there's Lots of other AI startups out there in Developer space so you know all these Components coming in the life cycle that Make us 50 more productive and 50 are Mind-blowing you know if if you work in A factory and you find five percent Improvements they're probably making you The employee of the month and they're Giving you a big paycheck because that Five percent accumulates over the over

The coming years and the same is true For us off yeah Um So do we have co-pilot users here as Well Do you feel like you're more productive Uh not everyone yes well they're nodding Okay good good so well the nice thing You know the nice thing um and let me be Clear about this obviously you know this Is the early days and and we have a lot Of work to do and we will see a lot of Progress um from the on the model side On the on the context site on on how we Learn to engage with these systems Um at the same time you know if if you Look at software development we have Done everything we could over the last Decade with you know devops processes Like pull requests and CI CD and code Reviews and hopefully none of you allow Mergers into your main branch without at Least one of your team members also Looking at the codes they're not Bringing the system down by making a Friday afternoon mistake and so in a way We have placed all these Safeguard um Into the process already that help us to Deal with these models that are clearly Not perfect and you know we talked about Hallucination a lot in the in in this Year already and but we are able to Leverage The Power of these models in Our workflow and it will only get better

And right now the model is code Completion chat you see other modes of Interacting with these models for Developers well yeah I mean it's it's Code completion it's chat on the side as A side passing it's it's highlighting Texts and asking questions which is like Right click you know context menu thing It's actually pretty cool that you know You get an error message in the console And vs code you can just highlight that Text and say explain that error message To me Um it's test generation and again in Chat you can just ask questions about Generate me a test class but you can Also bring that into your cicd workflow If you think about you know CI CD where Those completion and chat you have much Longer runtime you run minutes if not Hours and so you have a lot of time to Just measure what's test coverage like And if I generate another test you know Do I get test coverage up and is it Still green and you know if it's green And it's a useless test well and you Have extended your test time if it's red And it's a meaningful test then you Actually found a bug and so you will see All these other modes in the developer Lifecycle with something from the Background some things run into active Mode but the key thing is that they are All supplementing the work of the

Developer they're not replacing the work Of the developer because let's face it Every day when you're not sitting here You're writing more code we're sitting On an ever-growing pile of you know code Um and some of that is shitty code Because all developers hate the code That they wrote last year because you Have learned so much in the in the in That year and so you know so much more Now than you know last year and you you Know the tendency you will always have Is let's rewrite this whole thing and Then three it's three years later and we Haven't actually in customer value we Just rewrote the thing and so we need These tools to manage all the security Finding all the dependency updates all The vulnerabilities in our log 4J on a Friday afternoon to to be productive and Actually be creative where we've shifted So far left that now the developer has To do so much more You're an optivia I mean you're Skeptical but you seem to be an optimist When it comes to this technology what Could go wrong what what worries you I mean I think the the thing that could Go wrong already has gone wrong okay you Know if you look at log 4J or you know There are a number of security incidents Over the last few years and in fact There's a number of them every single Day and that we don't know about

Um that affect us as developers and that Force of hitters of God and and we have To fix this in a rush or sometimes we Have to spend a month of fixing this Instead of doing what we actually wanted To do and as the world has ever become More dependent on the software supply Chain you know the open source supply Chain uh we have new challenges ahead of Us and that we have to solve and you Know the you can find uh you know the The scenarios where like a single person In Sweden owned a piece of software that The whole internet was all at least you Know the whole Bay Area of seemingly was Dependent on Um and then if these things go wrong bad Things can happen as our services go Down bad things can happen if criminals You know Bad actors get access to this And ultimately that we're disappointing Our customers so I think there's a lot Of challenges ahead of us a lot of Problems that we have to solve in this World and obviously you know we haven't Talked about climate change and and all These other issues the energy crisis and Whatnot where I I I I have the optimism That you know software and generative AI Can and ultimately now technology uh can Help us solve these problems now it's The ultimate goal for basically Programming to become just chatting with The chatbot in natural language I don't

Have to learn C sharp anymore a typescript or JavaScript PHP I think it's the other way around I Think natural language will enable you To learn whatever language you want to Learn Um and you know if you think about you Know 60 year olds and that do not grow Up in the United States in the UK they Naturally do not speak English but Engaging in a software community means You need to know English Um if you want to have the most Up-to-date react tutorial you have to Read it in English how to if you want to Contribute back to an open source Project you have to speak English well Kits in six in first grade in Germany in Brazil and France do not speak English They speak German French or Brazilian Portuguese and so you have that Democratization effort that kids can now Learn coding and again what I said Earlier you don't have judgment with you And so you can ask any question about How do I start with python how can I Build a quick snake game as I did on Stage in recently and it's it's Incredible fun and you just need to you Know kids that have a little bit of Computer Science Background because you Still need that right the generates code But it's wrong at times you have to

Understand what it does but it seems Them engaging with chechi PT and with Co-pilot chat on whatever they want to Explore in the world and you see eyes That are like bright and and and and Curious and I think that's just amazing What that in technology will enable for Us and that makes me optimistic sure There's still one barrier though they Still have to pay for co-pilot You know It might be a barrier for someone so Students you know students and open Source maintainers uh do get co-pilot For free Um and as such you know we are on it um And I'm sure you know the technology Over time will see a certain degree of Commoditization and other features will Be monetized um that are you know uh or And those that are monetized today will Become free okay Now you've been pretty strong about the Fact that it's gonna make developers More productive but will not replace the Developers If is that going to hold true 10 years From now still you think absolutely okay Because the amount of software in 10 Years is only going to expansion and Exponentially grow and I mean just you Know ask the audience who's not looking For developers and have a hard time Finding them uh um at you know salaries

That you can actually afford and and we Have a shortage of computer science Students certainly in the Western World Um from Berlin you know to San Francisco And then to Sydney uh we have an Ever Growing number of lines of code we have To manage we have an Ever growing number Of ideas that we have and quite frankly Every company is now a software company And if you go to the banks and Financial Service institutions and you talk to the CTO there they're telling you they're Running cobal code from the 60s right And and those developers from the 60s Are all retired by now and that code Back then was not written with unit Tests and with cicd and and so somebody Has to maintain that and somebody Hopefully can transform that Cobalt code To Java or or Python and we're not Talking talking about the code of 70s The 80s to 90s and and all the code that We have written today and and I think I Think the demand for software developers Will continue to to outweigh the supply Of software developers and in a way you Know generative AI has just created Another demand wave where more companies With bold ideas Um both small and large now thinking About how can they adopt generative AI Into their business model looking for Developers that know how to use the Openai API and or train a model sure now

You got the idea for hockey app here in Moscone many many years ago yeah if you Were sitting in the audience here today What would you tell or what what ideas Would you think you would have what Would you build what if you went you Know if they did a shutdown get Microsoft next week what would you Well you know a 48 year old company I I'm pretty sure we're not shutting down Next I trust in Satya too um Um you know what you're alluding to is Um Apple used to have its developer Conference here in Moscone Center until 2016 I think and we were here in 2010 as Mobile developers seeing Apple uh Introducing uh ad hoc distribution and Where you could download apps on your Phone um without wiring into iTunes Developer apps and and so we got these Ideas by just listening to an otherwise Quite boring talk because it actually Was a talk about you know uh Enterprise Device provisioning and device Management and so I think and because That's where that you know technology Was intended for and then both us and And the folks from test flight had that Idea of building this this kind of Technology so number one is I think you Know listening very closely uh what's Happening around you in these sessions And and from the people that you're Meeting that you're sitting next to you

Right now or that you're meeting on the Hallway right these conferences are Great um that because you can go into Session and listen to us but they're Even even greater because you meet People outside that you can talk to and Build new networks and you know the the Co-founder of hockey app I met him on The way to the conference right and so If I had not gone to the conference I Might have still found that information But I hadn't met Andreas uh we met you Know actually at an escalator in Munich Airport and he was holding an iPhone I Was holding an iPhone and we just got to Talk that we go both to this conference And the other one is you know to to Always think outside the box you know The startups are successful not because They're building stuff that is where the Ball where the puck is right now but Where the pack is going to be and you You got to think big you got to think What AI is going to achieve in five to Ten years not what you can do on top of Chat GPT tomorrow and obviously there's A path into that into that journey and Um it's often a long journey um but That's yeah Well I hope some of you had some Brilliant moments here and some got some Ideas and I'll talk to you in 10 years When you're the next CEO of GitHub so Hopefully I'm still the CEO of GitHub

They're gunning for you so thank you Very much for having me Frederick [Applause]