> More people building things is straightforwardly good
Why is that straightforward? As an example, right now every year on Steam there are thousands of games released. A lot of them are just shovel ware that nobody ever plays, but it does end up hiding actual quality stuff in the noise. Same thing happens in app stores. Gatekeeping that limits opportunity is bad. But gatekeeping around quality is very good. Wanting your software to be written by someone who cares about software and has expertise is, to me, more straightforwardly good.
Right now people are blaming vibecoding for decline in a lot of mature software products, whether that's fair or not (I think it's frequently unfair). I think there's a possibility that's going to morph into "AI First" companies being seen as poor quality brands. Already we see in games that when listed they have to disclose if AI was used or not, and if it was, it damages the credibility quite a bit.
While I strongly agree that heavy LLM usage in industries that actually collect customer data, or make important decisions is INCREDIBLY harmful (with quite a bit of unfortunate regularity), democratizing coding “for all” especially in small, narrow niches, is similar to democratizing art, singing, music, general creating.
As long as it’s “for you” or “small time”, there really isn’t a problem at all.
The only real downside so far to LLMs (ignoring environmental concerns) is when they’re heavily used and left unrestrained to go play with financial data, healthcare data, PII, anything with real consequences when it breaks. If a person is using it to automate their life. If a father is using it to help their kid with accessibility issues speak. If an artist is using it to help them write code so they can make a game. These are all good things.
You might think it’s shovelware; but the creator of those things is now super excited that their vision was made or their niche issue was helped, when no one else would.
Why is that straightforward? As an example, right now every year on Steam there are thousands of games released. A lot of them are just shovel ware that nobody ever plays, but it does end up hiding actual quality stuff in the noise. Same thing happens in app stores. Gatekeeping that limits opportunity is bad. But gatekeeping around quality is very good. Wanting your software to be written by someone who cares about software and has expertise is, to me, more straightforwardly good.
Right now people are blaming vibecoding for decline in a lot of mature software products, whether that's fair or not (I think it's frequently unfair). I think there's a possibility that's going to morph into "AI First" companies being seen as poor quality brands. Already we see in games that when listed they have to disclose if AI was used or not, and if it was, it damages the credibility quite a bit.