But seriously, what’s a single good app out there that’s been written by AI with no developers involved? I don’t know of any. Not play apps, but real apps serving real users, with billing, subscriptions, some traffic, etc…
Anyone know of one?
Presumably something like the 'commoditization of elevator operating' that we once saw. The elevator operator never went away, but operating elevators was simplified to the point that anyone could do it. At which time everyone started doing it, commoditizing the job.
In other words, it looks like programming languages that become increasingly approachable to any old random person on the street who can jump in without any meaningful past experience or special knowledge. You know doubt already what that looks like because we're already using those programming languages (e.g. GPT) in narrow domains to great effect. They have yet to prove themselves as complete general purpose programming languages, but they have made great strives towards that and it is, by many accounts, now only a matter of time.
I can see it speeding engineers up, I can't see the guy on the clapham omnibus building a complex line of business app (or an operating system, flight computer, financial engine, MRI sequencer, etc...). And once it can't be your average Joe and it's someone who requires training, suddenly we're back to it not being a commodity.
While in recent memory the engineer and the coder have oft been the same person, that wasn't always the case (historically there was a clear divide between the engineers and coders) and isn't always the case. I see no mention of engineers around this discussion. Is there a reason for its introduction?
A coder and an engineer are not necessarily the same person. It has become more common to see people do both jobs, but in history it was unusual for the engineers and coders to be the same person, and the idea is that we're going back to that model – except this time the coder will be a machine instead of another human.