That's similar to my thinking. It seems we're still (or again?) in an age where an incredible amount of software is being written to validate value propositions and business models. Does anybody need something like this? Does anybody want something like this? What would people pay for it? Surprisingly often, this isn't done too well, and a lot of devs are thrown into working on stuff that is unlikely to be useful to anyone mid term. Many of us are just building lottery tickets.
Tools like this can potentially lead to this on absolute steroids (even as less capital is available), insane amounts of experiments around new products, features and businesses. That way we'd discover more valuable software, and need more developers to scale and maintain that stuff. Because the economics do reverse: At some point in a product's life cycle, that dev salary is well within the profit margin, and not really worth saving. Quite different from the experimentation phase where quantity>quality.
Another thing that could happen is that individuals build their own software more, like Excel on steroids. There would still be value in solving problems for users at scale, but this whole experimentation process wouldn't be so breadth-first anymore. And I suppose funding would be pretty dry for companies "just" solving one problem.
"AI" isn't even the biggest factor here, I believe. Tools to quickly run experiments and cheap labour are readily available. It kinda seems the times where every company felt they need to hire as many developers as possible are pretty much over.
In both scenarios, I suppose good times might be ahead for competent developers that can earn a client's/CEO's trust, and/or excel at solving problems automated tools fail at. Bad times might be ahead for anyone who just executes experiments other people came up with. Unfortunately, I fear that's the majority of us. It might just get more painful before our industry normalises after this prolonged phase of non-stop growth. But I do believe it will. Demographic change leading to shrinking work forces in most developed countries should help soften the blow.
Tools like this can potentially lead to this on absolute steroids (even as less capital is available), insane amounts of experiments around new products, features and businesses. That way we'd discover more valuable software, and need more developers to scale and maintain that stuff. Because the economics do reverse: At some point in a product's life cycle, that dev salary is well within the profit margin, and not really worth saving. Quite different from the experimentation phase where quantity>quality.
Another thing that could happen is that individuals build their own software more, like Excel on steroids. There would still be value in solving problems for users at scale, but this whole experimentation process wouldn't be so breadth-first anymore. And I suppose funding would be pretty dry for companies "just" solving one problem.
"AI" isn't even the biggest factor here, I believe. Tools to quickly run experiments and cheap labour are readily available. It kinda seems the times where every company felt they need to hire as many developers as possible are pretty much over.
In both scenarios, I suppose good times might be ahead for competent developers that can earn a client's/CEO's trust, and/or excel at solving problems automated tools fail at. Bad times might be ahead for anyone who just executes experiments other people came up with. Unfortunately, I fear that's the majority of us. It might just get more painful before our industry normalises after this prolonged phase of non-stop growth. But I do believe it will. Demographic change leading to shrinking work forces in most developed countries should help soften the blow.