> there are tech-savvy non-developers who are actually building and shipping stuff with AI

I absolutely believe that. I think those are people with "software brain" who are on their way to becoming real developers.

By the point they can write apps that are secure and scale... they'll have learned enough about software development to be employable as software developers. They'll be part of a new breed of developer who never memorized the syntax of a programming language, but they'll still be at the starting point of learning a HUGE volume of other stuff that's necessary to build good software.

If we want to stay employed, we need to be notably better at building software than they are.

Nevermind syntax, what's a variable? function? class? What's the difference between int/float/boolean string? Nevermind more advanced concepts like O(1) vs O(n). But when the vibe coder just needs to prompt "the page loads really slowly. plz fix" and the LLM can go in, add an index to the right SQL table, add a limit and pagination, so what if I can tell you the difference between PostgreSQL's dialect of SQL vs MySQL, and what the difference is in row types supported. I can describe what happens when you type Google.com into your webbrowser to an inane level of detail off the top of my head, but when the LLM can do an even more through version, I mean, I can pat myself on the back and be smug that I know most of that innately, but what is it really worth?

About a decade back, we, as an industry were collectively learning how to make apps webscale, and oh the blog posts about not using a database as a queue. But the LLMs have ingested all of them. I've only read the ones I came across, and of course my professional experience being part of teams implementing that at various companies. So I've got that going for me, but when the Vibe-platform-dev just has to tell the LLM "hey, when the user hits the send message button, it's slow. /goal make messages fast", and the LLM grinds for hours overnight switching the entire system over to a pub sub event driven architecture and the vibe-platform-dev doesn't even know what pubsub stands for or that they're using one unless they go back and read the transcript. I don't think there's as much of a domain expertise moat for as long as we're hoping.

It only takes two or three unreviewed prompts like "the page loads slow, plz fix" for you to end up with a tangled mess that even the agents can't productively work with.

Take a look at the Reddit forums for vibe-coders - now that a bunch of them have been hacking on things for 3+ months there's a growing awareness there that you hit a wall. Here's the first post I found from just searching "reddit vibe coding wall", it's a great illustration of the genre: https://www.reddit.com/r/vibecoding/comments/1sabdw3/anyone_...

Software development is really, really hard. Coding agents can get you a surprisingly long way, but if you want to build real software for real people you quickly find that you DO need that domain expertise.

The agents may type all of the code for you now, but you need a huge amount of skill to clearly tell them what to do, confidently decide what to do next and credibly present software that works for other people to use.

Offtopic, but how do you monitor all of this stuff, Simon? Do you have a routine where you recheck Reddit, Twitter, HN, other resources, or do you use LLMs to find material for you?

I spend way too much time on Hacker News, Bluesky and Twitter and occasionally check in on Reddit (I'm more of a lurker than a poster there.)

I don't have any automated LLM scanners, but I do frequently have ChatGPT run searches for me with questions like "Find the most credible accounts of the recent Oracle layoffs, how they went, rationale, problems caused".

This guy clearly didn't hit the limits of vibe composing a Reddit post.

Im not understanding why the discounting of your prior knowledge somehow slides over to a benefit for the non-technical vibe coder?

wouldnt you still be in a better position when prompting “site slow, make fast”?

For now. But in a future where the non-technical vibecoder + AI can fix the slow site without the benefit of my expertise to thoroughly prompt it properly, why hire me?

The business goal is that the site is slow. That gets fixed by the non-technical vibecoder for the cost of however many tokens. Why look for outside help (aka me) if there's no need to and the AI can do it all?

Right but when I look at how long complete self driving has been supposedly six months away I feel like there's a decent chance that the last 10% is not as easy to automate as the rest.

I agree, and I want to add that 'better' doesn't necessarily mean 'creates more robust, elegant, resilient software'. Better means from a business perspective. If we (I'm one of the people you're discussing) end up cheaper or more fungible, for example, we still might be worth hiring from a business perspective even if the code we create is shit.

I've also seen an assumption that you've made here that I think is worth drawing attention to and questioning: that the tech-savvy non-developers are starting from zero or near zero when it comes to programming and software development. Right now, that's probably mostly true, but I'm not sure that will continue to be the case. I'm not a developer (depending on how fuzzy we want the boundaries around the idea to be, anyway). I do understand the building blocks of programming languages (e.g. I can answer all the questions fragmede posed in a sister comment), the trade-offs between rolling your own and using existing libraries, the need to evaluate tools, frameworks, and languages to determine which is best for your use case, why version control matters, why access rights matter, why backups and a test environment are necessary, why it matters to write code another human can read, etc.

Do I understand as much as an active working developer? Absolutely not and I'd never claim to, but I'm far from starting at zero.

The reason for this is that I was raised by programmers. There are far, far more programmers and general tech nerds now than there were in 1988 (when I was born). Which means that in 10-20 years, there are going to be a lot more children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and so on of developers, and a lot of them are not going to be starting at zero. For pretty much of all computing history, there's been a substantial opportunity cost to developing a deep understanding of coding and software development: either a person has to be so into the domain that they devote a lot of their waking hours to it (usually in adolescence or young adulthood, when that trade off closes the most doors and makes developing certain other time intensive skills difficult), or they have to obtain a CS degree, which means not getting a different kind of degree and often incurring significant front-loaded financial costs. The opportunity cost for people born into programming or tech families is much lower. You can start younger and spread out the hours needed to learn across a greater amount of years, you can acquire knowledge in less time-intensive ways and while practicing other skills (e.g. my cousins also have 'software brain' and we could all hang out and develop those skills while also developing in person social skills), and you have a built in network of experienced people who want to help you + that can give you extremely individualized, personalized attention.

If what you suggest comes to pass, I think that one of the greatest threats to SDE as a career is going to be your own children and grandchildren.

This is a great comment, thanks for giving me a bunch to think about here.

I'm personally excited about people with deep specialities in other fields being able to build software without reskilling as software engineers first.

> I absolutely believe that. I think those are people with "software brain" who are on their way to becoming real developers.

In my opinion, this is a software developer-centric way of thinking that reminds me of the saying, "if all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail."

Here's an alternative perspective:

For billions of people, technology products are an integral part of daily life. As a result, lots of people have an interest in building technology products, particularly software. Thanks to AI, you no longer need to be a "real developer" to build software. You can learn enough to build things that are commercially viable without seeking to be employed as a developer.

> If we want to stay employed, we need to be notably better at building software than they are.

While I don't believe that the market for developers will shrink to 0, unfortunately, I think this type of comment reflects the fear, existential angst and denial that has overtaken many people in this industry.

The reality is that developers are no different than all the displaced workers who came before them. One day you had a job that seemed secure and capable of providing for a comfortable life and the next you were facing the prospect of diminished wages and unemployment because the world simply needs fewer people with your skills and there's no way around the secular trend.

The sad irony is that when software was eating the world and new CompSci grads could take their pick of $150,000+ job offers before ever writing a line of production code, a lot of people in the industry had a smug "tough luck" attitude towards all the workers being displaced by the tech boom. Now it's their turn.

> The sad irony is that when software was eating the world and new CompSci grads could take their pick of $150,000+ job offers before ever writing a line of production code, a lot of people in the industry had a smug "tough luck" attitude towards all the workers being displaced by the tech boom. Now it's their turn.

You could've just written this sentence and dropped the rest. I understand your vindictive, "justice", self-hate line of thought, but not it's not a healthy way to live. Get help.

Maybe the tools are going to get to a point where this isn't true but today even with Claude Code at whatever at hand you're going to have to learn enough about software to basically be a developer in the traditional sense to deliver a multi-tenant application that has to deal with high TPS or whatever. At least at present you're positing there's no need for carpenters because the home gamer can knock together a table or birdhouse at home.

> ...to deliver a multi-tenant application that has to deal with high TPS or whatever.

There's a whole world of opportunity that lives below complex multi-tenant applications that have to deal with high TPS.

> At least at present you're positing there's no need for carpenters because the home gamer can knock together a table or birdhouse at home.

This is an extreme, straw man argument. And here's the thing: I don't know a home gamer who framed a house. But I do know tech-savvy people who have used AI to build web apps that they have launched and been able to get customers to pay for.

Not every tech-savvy person has the ability to do this but the whole "you can't do that if you're not a software developer" argument looks to me like a denial mechanism more than a reflection of reality. People are doing it because the AI tools have advanced to the point where they can.

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.

Another angle to refute this take: my experience is software developers themselves arent good at building software products. Its been historically necessary but not sufficient to have to understand the underlying tech. Even if AI makes that no longer necessary, it doesn’t magically make people good at building useful and usable things.

Being in the weeds of the trade expands the lens of capabilities so I’d give the upper hand to someone more deeply aware of the tech vs not. even though that in itself is still not sufficient.

> there are tech-savvy non-developers who are actually building and shipping stuff with AI. I personally know a few who have been successful in acquiring initial customers.

It'll shake your world, but tech-savvy non-developers were building and shipping long before AI.

> they probably have a better intuitive sense for digital product design than a 30 or 40-something engineer who has been staring at an IDE for the past decade(s).

Because developers only stare at IDE 24/7, and never interact with anyone besides mother who brings tendies to their basement? What am I even reading?

> It'll shake your world, but tech-savvy non-developers were building and shipping long before AI.

They weren't building and shipping by themselves though. They were hiring people to do the work.

AI has made it possible for people with motivation and time to do what was previously only possible with motivation, time and money.

> Because developers only stare at IDE 24/7, and never interact with anyone besides mother who brings tendies to their basement? What am I even reading?

Why is so hard to acknowledge the fact that many of the people who are good at developing aren't as good at coming up with ideas for digital products and building businesses on them?

> They weren't building and shipping by themselves though.

Yes they did, all the time. You just need to get out of your tech bubble.

> AI has made it possible for people with motivation and time to do what was previously only possible with motivation, time and money.

Nonsense. AI simplified it, but programming was always accessible to the masses. They might not have shipped full blown SaaS products, but people have been programming with Excel, Access, Python, JS forever.

> Why is so hard to acknowledge the fact that many of the people who are good at developing aren't as good at coming up with ideas for digital products and building businesses on them?

Because it's a complete straw man detached from reality.

> AI simplified it, but programming was always accessible to the masses.

So basically you're referring to self-taught developers.

Repeat after me: learning to program so that you could build something is not the same thing as prompting AI to build something for you.

Previously, to launch anything of any real substance, you either had to teach yourself how to program or pay a developer. AI has given people a third way that does not require them to do either. This is expanding the size of the market for non-developers who are building and shipping digital products.

> Because it's a complete straw man detached from reality.

If you really believe the argument that "many of the people who are good at developing aren't as good at coming up with ideas for digital products and building businesses on them" is detached from reality, why isn't every engineer a multi-millionaire or multi-billionaire business owner? Why would anyone work for Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos for 6 figures a year when they could easily knock out their own digital products making 7, 8, 9 or 10 figures a year and be Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos?

It's just common sense that different people have different aptitudes. Some people are extremely talented at writing code; it doesn't mean they can come up with a business idea and actually execute it.

> I've posted this in numerous comments because I think it bears repeating: there are tech-savvy non-developers who are actually building and shipping stuff with AI. I personally know a few who have been successful in acquiring initial customers.

I mean, sure. But there have always been people teaching themselves to program too. In the end it's a pretty small population.