> For those developers who just want to build a thing to drive business value, or because they want a tool that they need, or because they think the end result will be fun to have, AI coding is great. It enables them to skip over (parts of) the tedious coding bit and get straight to the result bit.
Then they aren't programmers anymore, are they? We don't call people using no-code platforms "programmers" and we wouldn't trust them one bit to review actual code.
AI is simply the new no-code platform, except that the scope of what it can do is much larger while the reliability of what it produces is much lower.
Right not coding with AI requires a lot of skill in understanding where the AI is going wrong, so it's still coding. Someone who can't code isn't going to make a good app with AI (although a 'working' app is definitely possible.)
In the future though, sure,it'll be possible to build a decent app without ever seeing or understanding the code.
> The customer/user can't tell the difference between a good working app and a poor working app.
Come on man, this is the whole reason Duolingo was people's favourite language learning app, or people claim they like iPhones over Android phones or Photoshop over Canva. These apps and devices all work, but which one is good or better is a debate. People have preferences; some apps in a category are easier to use than others, and some apps have branding that signals status. Now, those things become more important in differentiating your app than "It does what it is supposed to do". Until now, just getting an app to do what you wanted it to do was a competitive advantage, that's becoming a smaller advantage day by day
Then they aren't programmers anymore, are they? We don't call people using no-code platforms "programmers" and we wouldn't trust them one bit to review actual code.
AI is simply the new no-code platform, except that the scope of what it can do is much larger while the reliability of what it produces is much lower.