Exactly this. Anti-AI Devs/Techies have their heads in the sand or/and resorting to binary thinking when it comes to AI.

No one is going to vibe code a Photoshop replacement just like no average smartphone user is going to take prize winning photographs with their phone or directly compete with professional photographs.

What is going to happen is what happened to videographers and photographers and what is happening to record musicians: the medium is going to become more accessible by reducing the cost and skill required to make lower quality items.

Just like random selfies don't need you to be a photographer, neither will the one off random app that only your household uses require you to be a programmer.

Making a music video of a trip doesn't require you to know technical knowledge of video recording nor basic music theory. You click buttons and it is done. It won't win prizes but it will be satisfying for the use case it occupies: a one off low scope purpose.

Making tiny one off apps is definitely going to become a thing among people beyond tech and tech adjacent fields. It won't be code clean, it won't be code reviewed or even code versioned but it will be useful and that's what matters ultimately.

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joenot443 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> neither will the one off random app that only your household uses

This reminds me a bit of the 2010s idea that every house would have a 3D printer to make one off repairs. Years later, this still seems far out of reach. If anything, it seems to have been settled that most non-technicals don't want a 3D printer.

Vibe coded apps are great, but unless they're hitting an already open API, they're effectively hermetic. There aren't many useful, high quality APIs out there without a companion app these days.

I encourage you to ask members of your household what apps they use which don't connect with any other apps, sites, or companies. I think we'll find the number is pretty low.

In your mind, what are some apps which don't currently exist which would be solving a bespoke household issue that non-techies will be reaching for vibe coding to solve?

I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I'm just not convinced the puddle is very deep. It's really hard to compare taking a photo with vibe-coding an app.

	▲	jeroenhd 21 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> would have a 3D printer to make one off repairs The problem with that is, like many people found out the hard way, that printing is the easy part and 3D CAD design is much harder. Many people now have 3D printers to print all kinds of useful tools, though, and there are businesses dedicated to one-off prints for the very occasional repair.
	▲	quacked 32 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Years later, this still seems far out of reach. If anything, it seems to have been settled that most non-technicals don't want a 3D printer. They would if you could print things out of durable materials that had weight and structure. I haven't seen any 3D printers that do anything except for that light resin-plastic that feels like you could snap it easily. But if I could print a PVC section for my sink that would totally change the calculus.

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flohofwoe an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I have my doubts, yes there will be tinkerers who build their own apps, but this will be roughly the same crowd who today tinker with home automation, soldering or model trains as a hobby (or as Douglas Adams said: "I am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand" - just replace "programming" with "vibecoding").

I don't see 'grandma' building here own calendar app via Claude Code that reminds her of the family birthdays.

	▲	Klathmon 29 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> I don't see 'grandma' building here own calendar app via Claude Code that reminds her of the family birthdays. If you think of apps in the traditional sense I think I agree with you, but I have a feeling things are about to become a lot more messy. Grandma might not even know she's building her own calendar app. I don't think we are that far from being able to ask a general purpose AI to "help me not forget my family's birthdays" and it creating and maintaining code for that purpose. Not quite an app, but more than a one off script, I think AIs are going to unlock this weird situation where they're running a bunch of barely organized code almost as an extension of thinking.
	▲	netdevphoenix 24 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Grandma likely isn't able to use most existing web apps beyond facebook, her default email client and little else either. Uncle Bob on the other hand will stop nagging you to make him those apps you never have the time to make him and will do it himself. He is a handyman, literate and numerate and able to use a computer like most middle age folks outside of tech can. Uncle Bob's mates at the local bar will see the software he wrote and will get into it themselves. The Gen X+ non-techie population is made up of more than just grandmas.
	▲	goolz 33 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Ya I wholly agree. The barrier to entry for new SaaS products also got really low for the KPMG-backed PE darlings of the world.