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Comment by JamesSwift | Hacker News Reader

Im bullish on more people being able to build software than pre-AI but bearish on the general population being able to. The unfortunate truth of AI is that it requires you to think like a dev to be effective. And thats just not how a lot of people think or want to think. Thats fine. But that means AI wont be a huge unlock for the masses.

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I think we might underestimate the evolution of these tools as AI gets both better and cheaper. The current form factors are like trying to setup a website in early 90s, cumbersome and not user friendly. Coding infra, AI coding UI, etc are not solved problems yet. If things progress, I think there will be a time when a whole app can be developed and deployed with a single prompt. In that kind of world, who can’t write code?

Good stuff isn't a single prompt. It's multiple prompts, refinements, building a moat.

Otherwise the single prompt stuff is fodder for a million clones.

I think you're failing to see the forest through all those trees. The value of software will plummet as barriers to entry fall and people become more capable of creating exactly what they need for their own specific purpose.

Meh. Have you tried to sell basic software? It's been cheap or free since the shareware days of the early 90s.

Most devs weren't being paid out of that.

That's exactly the opposite?

Fast food software will be cheaper (but not cheap, McDonalds is considered expensive in many countries).

The value of software will skyrocket and it will be hidden behind an API so to not be copied fast.

I mean what Im hearing is "once we have AGI it will be easy". Sure, agreed. But AGI is going to unlock a lot more than software dev including having people just one-shot Lovable replacements. I also just fundamentally disagree its going to happen without another several "attention is all you need" events all chained together.

I think you are doing the equivalent of looking at a hockey stick graph and extrapolating to infinity on where we are headed. We are already hitting the asymptote and the line is starting to go horizontal. Theres plenty of gains to be had by current state of AI, I'm not trying to be a wet blanket. I just dont think those gains are going to be had by "the masses using AI". Its going to be highly technical people doing highly technical things at scopes and speeds previously unimaginable.

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