You're overstating the case, but I think there's a strong possibility people will prompt AIs to produce bespoke apps that solve their niche use-case rather than paying a developer to do it.

I pay for a SaaS app that tracks my finances, but it's not that great and missing some features I would like. Very soon I expect I'll be able to get a better, local-first replacement tailored to my needs by prompting Claude & Friends.

There are two big advantages to using a 3rd party system.

1) There are a lot of cases where aggregated user data, even if anonymized, allows for insights that you can't get using just your own data.

2) The software is really just a stand in for a process. A way of doing something, like record keeping or tax filing, etc. A lot of times it makes sense to follow an already established process rather than creating your own. You are less likely to encounter unexpected pitfalls that way.

I don't see how you can overcome those just by having an AI that can build simple crud apps at will.

I think developers overestimate the amount of people who want to create app. My friends are lawyers, doctors, musicians, Pr, sales and they really dont care about creating their own apps or software. They use their iPhones for calls and Instagram.

I doubt it.

I’m publishing a very simple app with very little human written code and so far 90% of the actual work has had nothing to do with development. Most of it has been the “business” stuff, especially since the app stores have a lot of compliance and setup requirements.

Your example of a financial app is perfect: maybe one day grandma will be able to vibecode a budget app but then how is she going to set up the integration with banks? Publish it to the App Store? Keep it updated with bug fixes and resolve security issues? Is the AI going to handle security and incident response too?

Maybe you’ll say that one day the AI will just handle all this automatically with zero input or setup, but I think we have to assume that we are still asking grandma to spend time writing down what she wants and interfacing with the AI a pretty substantial amount to get it finished.

The thing is, we are also talking about competing with a SaaS product that is already available for around $5/month, and the professional software developers working on that product also have access to AI (and a whole lot of other skills).

Even making grandma put in a few prompts here and there is going to result in enough wasted time to say “screw this, I’ll just pay $5 a month for Simplifi.”