I think exceptional work, AI tools or not, still takes exceptional people with experience and skill. But I do feel like a certain level of access to technology has been unlocked for people smart enough, but without the time or tools to dive into the real industry's tools (figma, code, data tools etc).
I think the idea that LLM's will usher in some new era where everyone and their mom are building software is a fantasy.
I am usually a bit of an AI skeptic but I can already see that this is within the realm of possibility, even if models stopped improving today. I think we underestimate how technical things like WIX or Squarespace are, to a non-technical person, but many are skilled business people who could probably work with an LLM agent to get a simple product together.
People keep saying code was never the real skill of an engineer, but rather solving business logic issues and codifying them. Well people running a business can probably do that too, and it would be interesting to see them work with an LLM to produce a product.
In the same vein, I think you underestimate how much "hidden" technical knowledge must be there to actually build a software that works most of the time (not asking for a bug-free program). To design such a program with current LLM coding agents you need to be at very least a power user, probably a very powerful one, in the domain of the program you want to build and also in the domain of general software. Maybe things will improve with LLM and agents and "make it work" will be enough for the agent to create tests, try extensively the program, finding bugs and squashing them and do all the extra work needed, who know. But we are definitely not there today.
