Why is anyone paying for these apps if any idiot can do it with a few prompts?

> ...if any idiot can do it with a few prompts?

With all due respect, this sounds like just another version of the arrogant, scared attitude that seems to be more and more prevalent among software folks these days.

Is it really hard to imagine that there are tech-savvy people who are smart and motivated but don't have training as software developers, who are now capable of using AI to build and ship things?

In other words, AI doesn't allow any "any idiot" to build commercially useful software. What it does is allow smart people who aren't software developers and who don't want to become software developers professionally to, with a much shorter learning curve and on a much faster time scale, take their ideas and build and ship functional software.

It just feels like I’m trying to nail spaghetti to the wall talking to you because you can’t make up your mind what your argument is. Either it still requires learning and skill to do it —- in which case these are self-taught software developers, which is not a new phenomenon —- or it’s so easy now that the work is completely deskilled, in which case we shouldn’t expect anyone to be able to charge for their work for very long once everyone realizes.

It seems to me you're more interested in semantics than the substance of the discussion. Why not consider the possibility that AI is creating something new?

I would argue that the non-developers who are able to use AI to build, ship and sell software aren't "self-taught software developers". The biggest reason is that they're effectively not learning how to code in any meaningful way. They don't need to. AI is getting "so good" that they can prompt their way to functional software without the same level of knowledge and skill that was required previously to do the same.

We can discuss the limits and risks of this, and you can criticize AI's output, but the reality is that people are actually doing this and having some success. First hand, I've seen a former colleague who is a skilled digital marketer with no development experience launch a web app for a niche market and sell it to a number of customers.

I don't understand why you're so interested in extremes (your skilled versus deskilled hyperbole). Is it really so hard to contemplate that AI is disrupting the market for software development? It's not that it has eliminated the need for intelligence and skill; it's that it is allowing a larger number of people to do something that previously required a different set of skills that was much more difficult and time-consuming to acquire.

To use Silicon Valley speak, AI is democratizing software development. That doesn't mean every idiot can build and deploy a functioning web application; it does mean that a growing number of intelligent, motivated non-developers can.

I bought a book however many years ago with no previous development experience and delivered a Web app people paid for and eventually honed that as an actual career, so I’m just not really seeing what’s a difference in kind here. I also disagree with the “democratization” frame because now developers are spending like $1000 per month on tokens at their jobs, which does the opposite of making things more accessible.

> I bought a book however many years ago with no previous development experience and delivered a Web app people paid for and eventually honed that as an actual career, so I’m just not really seeing what’s a difference in kind here.

So you taught yourself how to program. Do you not see that there's a difference between teaching yourself how to program so that you could build a web application and using a new technology that allows you to build a web application without having to learn how to program?

I get that people have differences of opinion but it seems to me like you're being intentionally obtuse here. Learning how to program to build web applications is not the same as learning how to use a new technology that can build web applications for you without you having to learn how to code.

> I also disagree with the “democratization” frame because now developers are spending like $1000 per month on tokens at their jobs, which does the opposite of making things more accessible.

I'm curious: if you're already working as a developer and your employer values your skills, why do you have to spend anything on tokens? Are you not able to do your job satisfactorily without AI?

The "democratization" has nothing to do with people working as developers. The "democratization" refers to the ability of a growing number of smart, motivated people who don't know how to program to create working software using AI.

> So you taught yourself how to program. Do you not see that there's a difference between teaching yourself how to program so that you could build a web application and using a new technology that allows you to build a web application without having to learn how to program?

Well, I guess where we're not lining up is I don't see that you are going to deliver a serious application that isn't the equivalent of table knocked together in a home workshop without, in practice, "learning how to program." Like, what are you not understanding here? I keep saying this and you keep alternating between accusing me of being deliberately obtuse and accusing me of motivated reasoning, but you aren't actually addressing the argument I am making.

> I'm curious: if you're already working as a developer and your employer values your skills, why do you have to spend anything on tokens? Are you not able to do your job satisfactorily without AI?

Sure, but I can do more stuff faster with AI, which they also value enough to pay for the tools. Is that a serious question? You will find few professional software developers whose employers aren't encouraging AI tool use today.

> The "democratization" has nothing to do with people working as developers. The "democratization" refers to the ability of a growing number of smart, motivated people who don't know how to program to create working software using AI.

Yeah, I understand that, and I reject the framing because 1) it's made the way professional developers work much more capital-intensive and different from the ways hobbyists work in a way that's unattainable for the average hobbyist 2) I don't really agree with the idea that all the barriers are gone and everyone's ready to deliver commercial-grade software without understanding what they're doing. If you think that's the case, then you'll have to conclude most businesses are acting highly irrationally by continuing to pay high wages to employ people with specialized knowledge of software development to operate AI tools rather than just handing it over to your new breed of semiskilled laborers who don't need to know how to program.

> Well, I guess where we're not lining up is I don't see that you are going to deliver a serious application that isn't the equivalent of table knocked together in a home workshop without, in practice, "learning how to program."

My argument is that AI is now "good enough" that there are real people who are smart and tech-savvy but who don't know how to program who are building real applications, shipping them and using them commercially.

By any reasonable standard, these people haven't "learned how to program." They've learned how to use a tool that can program for them, troubleshoot for them, give them clear, step-by-step instructions on how to deploy to numerous services that have made it possible for non-developers to deploy, etc.

> Sure, but I can do more stuff faster with AI, which they also value enough to pay for the tools. Is that a serious question? You will find few professional software developers whose employers aren't encouraging AI tool use today.

But you stated previously:

> I also disagree with the “democratization” frame because now developers are spending like $1000 per month on tokens at their jobs, which does the opposite of making things more accessible.

So who is paying for the tokens? You or your employer? If your employer is paying for them, what's the problem?

> I don't really agree with the idea that all the barriers are gone and everyone's ready to deliver commercial-grade software without understanding what they're doing. If you think that's the case, then you'll have to conclude most businesses are acting highly irrationally by continuing to pay high wages to employ people with specialized knowledge of software development to operate AI tools rather than just handing it over to your new breed of semiskilled laborers who don't need to know how to program.

I never argued that all barriers are gone and that every idiot can deliver "commercial-grade" software. What I've argued, again, is that AI has for a growing number of smart non-developers improved to the point where it offers a third path separate from learning-to-program or hiring a developer.

As for what businesses are doing, the general trends speak for themselves. Companies are citing AI in layoffs. It's absolutely brutal right now for new grads and juniors who a decade ago were inundated with 6-figure offers. Lots of freelancers/contractors/agencies who could easily sell 5 and 6-figure projects or command $xxx/hour rates just a few years ago are finding it much harder to do so.

The market for highly-paid developers isn't going to 0 overnight but anyone who thinks it isn't going in a certain direction is in my opinion in denial.

OK, let me try putting this in a different way: you may be able to get away with not knowing syntax, but if you aim to deliver and support an application that people pay for, that wasn't the chief thing that was hard to learn about. The tools could improve to the point they deskill the work but today one must learn about enough concepts that, in practice, they're still "learning to program," much like people didn't stop needing to "learn to program" because C or garbage collection or IDEs or WYSIWIG UI editors came into fashion and made some kinds of knowledge less important.

> So who is paying for the tokens? You or your employer? If your employer is paying for them, what's the problem?

There is no problem but it's obviously not "democratizing" it to need to have an employer willing to pay thousands per month for AI tools. Now I'm wondering if you're the one being deliberately obtuse.

> The tools could improve to the point they deskill the work but today one must learn about enough concepts that, in practice, they're still "learning to program,"...

Then we'll have to agree to disagree. There are people building, deploying and selling applications using AI who aren't doing anything close to what I would consider "programming". This is so far beyond the comparison to an IDE or WYSIWYG editor.

> There is no problem but it's obviously not "democratizing" it to need to have an employer willing to pay thousands per month for AI tools.

Why does your employer need to be willing to pay thousands per month for AI tools if you don't need AI to do your job? Can't you just tell your employer you don't need AI? If you use 0 tokens, don't they pay for 0 tokens? Or do you have an employer who is forcing you to use AI? How are you using it if you don't need it?

> Why does your employer need to be willing to pay thousands per month for AI tools if you don't need AI to do your job? Can't you just tell your employer you don't need AI? If you use 0 tokens, don't they pay for 0 tokens? Or do you have an employer who is forcing you to use AI? How are you using it if you don't need it?

An accountant could do his job without Excel, a developer when AI didn't exist could do his job without IntelliJ, a carpenter can use hand tools, and on and on and on. I don't really understand what you think you're revealing with this line of questioning. I can do the job more productively with the tools so they pay for the tools. If we're making appeals to rational behavior on employers' part, they did hire me, and at prevailing SWE wages, to do it, rather than getting someone who doesn't know how to program in any traditional sense, and then immediately encourage my use of the tools.

> If we're making appeals to rational behavior on employers' part, they did hire me, and at prevailing SWE wages, to do it, rather than getting someone who doesn't know how to program in any traditional sense, and then immediately encourage my use of the tools.

Why would an employer hire a non-programmer for a programming job? Do you think that the only people who can use AI to build software are software developers?

Once again, the "democratization" comes from the fact that a growing number of smart people who aren't programmers and who by any reasonable definition haven't taught themselves how to program are now able to use AI to build and ship software products. They aren't recreating Salesforce in a weekend, and they're not coming to take your job, but the latest models are sufficiently good at creating polished (if still uniform looking) web applications with features including access controls, billing, etc. through prompting alone. So non-developers have a new path for creating software themselves without learning to program or hiring a programmer.

As for AI's impact on the labor market for developers, you either believe that a) the need for software will outpace the productivity gains you acknowledge at a significant enough pace so that the number of developers needed and the wages they can command will stay the same or increase or b) AI will reduce the number of developers needed and the wages they can command.

So which one is it? Well, when new grads that would have had multiple 6-figure offers a few years ago are struggling to get hired and you have big tech companies laying off hundreds of thousands of people with CEOs like Zuckerberg making statements like "we're starting to see projects that used to require big teams being accomplished by a single talented person", it sure doesn't look like the former.

> So which one is it? Well, when new grads that would have had multiple 6-figure offers a few years ago are struggling to get hired and you have big tech companies laying off hundreds of thousands of people with CEOs like Zuckerberg making statements like "we're starting to see projects that used to require big teams being accomplished by a single talented person", it sure doesn't look like the former.

Well, that's your belief; I don't share your confidence (there were and are a lot of headwinds to hiring besides AI but AI is the most investor-friendly face to put on them). But it seems like a completely different discussion.

To the main point, I really don't think the fact that non-professionals can make software with AI is fundamentally different than the way, say, Access could slowly move you along the continuum from a user to a full-fledged developer. Yes, someone can do more things, faster, but in essence, it's the same thing. But this conversation is frankly really circular and unsatisfying. You have your thing you want to believe, and you have the spiteful edge you want to put on it. That's fine.