Solve your own problems
I have been asked numerous times to write a small application to solve a specific problem for someone.
This problems are specific to them and can be solved with a small amount of code to automate something that is either too difficult or too time consuming to be done by hand. It takes a little bit of time to develop but tends to be something that can be thrown together with minimal effort.
The code is not going to win any prizes but it solves the problem at hand.
With the advent of AI it has provided a way for people to potentially solve these small problems themselves. With a bit of trial an error they can generate code that is good enough to solve their problem.
Again, the code is not going to win any prizes but it solves the problem at hand.
There has been a lot of talk about AI bringing the end of software development. This article proposes that the impact of these AI coding tools will not be the end but a shift in the boundaries.
The most interesting takeaway for me was:
When the time and expertise required to create software drops dramatically, the minimum viable market size for a software project approaches one.
An application will no longer need a large market to make it viable or specialist skills to develop if the the problem is small enough and can be defined clearly enough. This opens up new avenues for improving the lives and productivity for people.
A whole host of problems that were previously uneconomic to solve are now potentially within scope of an automated solution.
I agree, at least in the short to mid term, that there will still be a need for skilled developers for larger applications. These skilled developers can focus on bigger problems.
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