It will definitely happen and I see both positive and negative outcomes.

My suspicion is that individuals who are dependent on AI to build an app will have difficulties changing the code and its structure. This may result in high numbers of "meh" apps that users need to filter out in order to find the rare gems.

I don't oppose this at all, people are free to create, but as we rely more and more on filtering out the sub-par, we simultaneously delegate more power to whoever design the search/filtering mechanism.

It might have the positive effect of inspiring some people to learn more, yet those are also the same people that can learn from a traditional programming book or video tutorial. Doing the work is always necessary for familiarity and understanding.

The takeaway from AI art generation is that it put art production in the hands of individuals with a high degree of unknown unknowns; individuals that don't have the experience to know how much they don't know in the field. Probably the same applies to programming. It takes working directly with something from the ground up to develop the thinking process to a point of experience. 

 I think it also depends on how they are utilizing AI. If they use it as a tool, like smart autocompletion or Copilot, it can be very productive, and you're still doing all the thinking. I won't take any credit away from that person.

But I also get what you're saying. If someone asks AI to 'create a nostr client,' copies an existing repository from GitHub, modifies it, and rewrites it, that's not innovation.

We're going to need people with a deeper understanding of IT and development for a very long time. Tbh, I'm not sure if AI can ever replace that.

However, in all this chaos, I also think we'll find some interesting things for sure. 😂